Radio devices used by Hezbollah fighters, medical workers and administrative officials exploded across Lebanon on Tuesday, killing 12 people and wounding around 2,800, according to official figures.
The explosions across the country culminated a series of escalating attacks on Hezbollah targets that Israel has claimed or blamed, including a July airstrike that killed senior military commander Fouad Shukr in the southern outskirts of Beirut.
The pager explosion, described as a “major blow” by a source close to Hezbollah, came hours after Israel announced it was expanding its Gaza war aims to include fighting Hezbollah on its northern border.
Hezbollah blamed Israel for the attack, but Israel has neither denied nor confirmed its involvement in Tuesday’s blast.
– Parallel Networks –
Hezbollah has been engaged in near-daily gun battles with Israel in support of its ally Hamas since Palestinian militant group Hezbollah attacked Israel on October 7, sparking the Gaza conflict. Shortly afterwards, the group urged its members to avoid using mobile phones that could be compromised by Hezbollah, as Israel has been conducting airstrikes targeting Hezbollah fighters for months. Tuesday’s explosion was aimed at a batch of newly imported pagers, said a security source who spoke to AFP on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.
Security sources said Hezbollah was avoiding using Lebanon’s state-run telecommunications network after it was infiltrated by Israel.
He said the pagers were “used to summon fighters to the front line, to notify civilians and medical personnel when necessary, but also to warn of Israeli drones flying overhead.”
Hisham Jaber, a retired Lebanese army officer and military analyst, downplayed the importance of pagers because Hezbollah “has other means of covert communication.”
This includes an “internal communications network” that runs parallel to Lebanon’s public landlines and has been used for years by commanders and soldiers.
But a security source said the group “suspects that parts of this network may have been infiltrated into Israel in the south.”
Analysts said Hezbollah faces a major challenge in restoring confidence in the security of its communications.
“This is clearly a breach of technology and security,” said Amal Saad, a Hezbollah researcher and lecturer at Britain’s Cardiff University.
“Hezbollah will have to find a way to counter this,” she said, but “it’s not easy to find other very primitive means that Israel can’t deploy. They can deploy anything.”
Heiko Wimmen, the International Crisis Group’s project director for Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, told AFP that Hezbollah “now has to assess its communications systems, determine to what extent it can rely on the remaining pagers and find alternatives.”
– Human loss –
The deaths from the pager explosion add to the 414 deaths Hezbollah has suffered in firefights with Israel since October.
“A lot of people have disabilities and probably several hundred people will not be able to fulfil their roles in the party, which of course is very disruptive,” Wimmen said.
Jaber said no leading politicians were injured in the blast and that the casualties represented only a small part of Hezbollah’s fighting strength.
“The party has 50,000 fighters, but about 3,000 are wounded,” he said.
However, the son of Hezbollah MP Ali Ammar was killed, and the sons of MP Hassan Fadlallah and Hezbollah security chief Wafik Safa were injured.
Security sources said Hezbollah had not yet heard from a senior commander in the south and several frontline fighters whose pagers exploded.
Experts agree that the attack will have an impact on how Hezbollah conducts its operations.
“Secure communications is key in any war. If an enemy can penetrate the communications network, they’re in big trouble,” Wimmen said.
“There will obviously be implications in terms of how this affects Hezbollah’s ability to wage war,” Saad said, adding that “it will obviously affect Hezbollah’s military calculations.”
