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The detonation of 5,000 pagers imported by Lebanon’s Hezbollah group months ago has raised concerns from Taiwan to Hungary while raising the prospect of a wider war in the Middle East between the Iran-backed group and Israel.
A senior Lebanese security source and another source told Reuters that the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad planted explosives inside the pagers months before Tuesday’s bombings.
The operation was an unprecedented security breach targeting Hezbollah, during which thousands of devices were detonated across Lebanon, killing nine and wounding nearly three thousand, including fighters from the group and the Iranian ambassador to Beirut.
The Lebanese security source said that the pagers were manufactured by Taiwan-based Gold Apollo. However, Gold Apollo said in a statement that it did not manufacture the devices, explaining that they were manufactured by Budapest-based BAC, which has a license to use the Gold Apollo brand.
The Iran-aligned group vowed to retaliate against Israel. The Israeli military declined to comment on the explosions.
The explosions come at a time of growing concern over tensions between Israel and Hezbollah, which have been exchanging fire across the border since the outbreak of the conflict in Gaza last October.
While the war in Gaza has been Israel’s main focus since Hamas’s October 7 attack, the fragile situation along Israel’s northern border with Lebanon is raising fears of a regional conflict that could draw in the United States and Iran.
“Hezbollah wants to avoid a full-scale war. It still wants to avoid one,” said Mohanad Hage Ali of the Carnegie Middle East Center. “But given the scope of this and the impact on families and civilians, there will be pressure for a stronger response.”
Hezbollah said in a statement on Wednesday, “The resistance in Lebanon will continue today, as in all the past days, its blessed operations to support Gaza, its people and its resistance, and to defend Lebanon, its people and its sovereignty.”
He continued, “This path is continuous and separate from the difficult reckoning that the criminal enemy must face for its massacre on Tuesday that it committed against our people, our families, and our mujahideen in Lebanon.”
Several sources told Reuters that the plot apparently took several months to prepare. It came in the wake of a series of assassinations since the start of the war in Gaza targeting leaders and officials from Hezbollah and Hamas, which Israel has been accused of carrying out.
Path to Budapest
The senior Lebanese security source said Hezbollah had ordered 5,000 Gold Apollo communication devices, which several sources say arrived in the country earlier this year.
Gold Apollo founder Hsu Ching-kuang said the communications devices used in the explosions were made by a company in Europe. Gold Apollo said in a statement that the company’s name was BAC.
“The product is not ours. It just has our brand,” Hsu told reporters at the company’s headquarters in New Taipei City, northern Taiwan, on Wednesday.
The address given for BAC Consulting in Budapest was a small building on a mostly residential street in a remote suburb. The company’s name was written on an A4 sheet of paper on the glass door.
A person in the building who asked not to be identified said the company was registered at the address but had no physical presence there. BAC Chief Executive Cristiana Barsoni-Arcidacono says on her LinkedIn profile that she has worked as a consultant for various organizations including UNESCO. She did not respond to emails from Reuters.
The activities of the registered company, BAC, range from publishing computer games to IT consulting to extracting crude oil.
The senior Lebanese security source showed a picture of the communication device, an AR-924 model, which, like other pagers, receives and displays text messages wirelessly, but cannot make phone calls.
Two sources familiar with Hezbollah operations told Reuters this year that Hezbollah fighters use the devices as a low-tech means of communication in an attempt to evade Israeli location tracking systems.
But the senior Lebanese source said the devices were modified “in the production phase” by Israeli intelligence.
The source added, “Mossad placed a panel inside the devices containing an explosive material that receives a code that is very difficult to detect by any means.”
The source said that three thousand pagers exploded when they received an encrypted message that led to the activation of explosive materials simultaneously.
Another security source told Reuters that up to three grams of explosives were hidden in the new pagers and were not discovered by the group for several months.
Israel’s Mossad is known for its sophisticated operations dating back to the daring kidnapping of Nazi mastermind Adolf Eichmann in 1960. More recently, it has been blamed for cyberattacks and the 2020 assassination of a top Iranian scientist with a remote-controlled machine gun.
Israeli officials did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment.
Security breach
Hezbollah is still recovering from the shock of the attack, which killed or wounded fighters and civilians. A Hezbollah official, who asked not to be identified, said the explosions represented the “biggest security breach” in the group’s history.
In a speech on February 13, the group’s secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah, sternly warned his supporters that their phones were more dangerous than Israel’s spies, saying, “Shut them down, bury them, put them in an iron box and lock them up. Do this for the sake of security and to protect people’s blood and dignity.”
Instead of cell phones, the group has opted to distribute pagers to its members across its various branches, from fighters to paramedics working in relief services.
Hospital footage reviewed by Reuters showed the blasts wounded many Hezbollah members. The wounded suffered facial injuries, amputated fingers and deep wounds to the thigh and abdomen, where pagers are usually placed.
Hezbollah’s rocket fire in the wake of Hamas’s October 7 attack opened a second front in the conflict. Since then, Hezbollah and Israel have exchanged rockets, artillery fire and shells almost daily, while Israeli aircraft carry out strikes deep inside Lebanese territory.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told his US counterpart Lloyd Austin on Monday that the chances of any diplomatic solution to the confrontation with Hezbollah were diminishing.
