Apparently Refined Ranged AttacksPagers used by hundreds of Hezbollah members exploded almost simultaneously in Lebanon and Syria on Tuesday. At least nine people killed One person was killed, including an 8-year-old girl, and thousands more were injured.
Iranian-backed militant groups have claimed Israel’s responsibility for the deadly blast, which targeted a wide area and showed signs of long-term planning. Much of how the attack was carried out remains unclear, and investigators did not immediately say how the pagers exploded. The Israeli military declined to comment.
Here’s what we know so far:
Why were pagers used in the attack?
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has previously warned his group members not to carry mobile phones, as they could be used by Israel to track Hezbollah’s movements. As a result, Hezbollah uses pagers as a means of communication.
A Hezbollah official told The Associated Press that the bomb was a new brand the group had never used before, but declined to identify the brand or source, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
Nicholas Rees, an adjunct lecturer at the Center for International Affairs at New York University’s Graduate School of Professional Studies, explains that smartphones are at a higher risk of having their communications intercepted than the simpler technology of pagers.
An attack of this kind would force Hezbollah to change its communications strategy, said Rees, the former intelligence officer, adding that survivors of Tuesday’s blast “are likely to abandon not only their pagers but also their cellphones and leave behind tablets and other electronic devices.”
How could sabotage cause these pagers to explode?
Investigators have released little information so far, but several theories emerged Tuesday about how the attack was carried out, with experts who spoke to The Associated Press suggesting the explosion was likely the result of a supply chain interruption.
The pagers may have been fitted with very small explosive devices before being delivered to Hezbollah and then simultaneously activated remotely, possibly by radio signal.
At the time of the attack, “the batteries were probably half explosives and half actual batteries,” said Carlos Pérez, director of security intelligence at TrustedSec.
A former British Army bomb disposal officer explained that an explosive device consists of five main components: the container, the battery, the detonator, the detonator and the explosives.
“The pager already has three bombs in it,” explained the former officer, who asked not to be named because he now works as a consultant for clients in the Middle East. “All that’s left is to add the detonator and the explosives.”
After security camera footage was posted on social media on Tuesday purporting to show a pager hitting a man on his waist and exploding in a Lebanese market, two munitions experts also said the blast was likely caused by a small explosive device.
“The video shows the size of the explosion to be similar to that caused by an electro-explosive device alone, or a device containing very small high explosives,” said Sean Moorhouse, a former British army officer and explosive ordnance disposal expert.
This indicates the involvement of a nation-state actor, Moorhouse said, adding that Israel’s foreign intelligence service, Mossad, was the most obvious suspect as it had the resources to carry out such an attack.
NR Jensen Jones, director of the Australia-based Weapons Research Service and a military weapons expert, said the scale and sophistication of the attack “almost certainly made it the work of a nation-state actor,” and acknowledged that Israel has been accused of carrying out similar operations in the past. Last year, the Associated Press reported that Iran had accused Israel of trying to attack it. sabotaging ballistic missile programs through defective foreign-made parts that could explodeDamage or destroy the weapon before it can be used.
How long did this surgery take?
An attack of this magnitude would take a long time to plan — precise details are still unclear, but experts who spoke to The Associated Press estimated it could take anywhere from a few months to two years.
The sophistication of the attack suggests whoever was behind it had been gathering information over a long period of time, Reese explained. An attack of this level would require building the relationships necessary to gain physical access to the pagers before they were sold, developing the technology that gets embedded in the pagers, and cultivating sources who could verify that the pagers were in the hands of their targets.
And the compromised pagers likely appeared normal to users for some time before the attack. Elijah J. Magnier, a Brussels-based military veteran and senior political risk analyst with more than 37 years of experience in the region, said he has spoken with Hezbollah members and survivors of Tuesday’s pager attack. He said the pagers were procured more than six months ago.
“The pagers had been working perfectly fine for six months,” Magnier said. He said it appeared that an error message was being sent to all the devices that caused the outage.
Magnier also said that based on conversations with Hezbollah members, many of whose pagers did not ring, allowing Hezbollah to investigate, Hezbollah had concluded that between 3 and 5 grams of highly explosive material was hidden or embedded in the circuitry.
What else could have happened?
Another possibility is that malware was injected into the pager’s operating system, which somehow overloaded all the batteries in the device at a certain time, causing it to explode and catch fire.
Hezbollah officials and Lebanese security officials said the pagers first became hot on Tuesday afternoon and then exploded in the pockets or hands of those who carried them.
Hezbollah officials said the pagers were powered by lithium-ion batteries and exploded as a result of being targeted in an Israeli “security operation,” but did not provide further details.
If overheated, lithium-ion batteries can smoke, melt, and even catch fire. Rechargeable lithium batteries are used in a wide variety of consumer products, from cell phones and laptops to electric cars. Lithium battery fires can burn up to 590°C (1,100°F).
Still, Moorhouse and others noted that the images and video footage reviewed Tuesday closely resembled the explosion of a small explosive, rather than the result of an overheated battery.
“Aside from lithium-ion battery fires, I’ve never seen an explosion like this. It looks like a small explosive,” said Alex Pritsas, a weapons expert at the Atlantic Council.
Jenzen Jones, one of those blaming the possibility of a supply chain attack, added that “an operation of such magnitude raises questions about its targeting,” highlighting the number of casualties and massive impacts reported so far.
“How can someone planting an explosive device be sure that a child isn’t playing with a pager when it goes off?” he said.
