The beepers that exploded in Lebanon and Syria had explosive charges

Preliminary data indicates that the devices were preprogrammed to detonate and contained explosive materials placed next to the battery.

A preliminary investigation found that hundreds of pagers that exploded in Lebanon, killing at least 12 people and injuring up to 2.800, had booby traps, a security official said Wednesday.

Lebanon has opened an investigation into Tuesday's blasts that is still "in its early stages," a judicial official said, adding that security services were working to determine the cause of the explosions, which they blamed on Israel.

On Wednesday, a new wave of explosions involving handheld devices, this time walkie-talkies, killed nine people and injured more than 300 across Lebanon, the Health Ministry said.

“The data indicates that the devices were preprogrammed to detonate and contained explosive materials placed next to the battery“,” the official said of Tuesday’s explosions, requesting anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

The judicial official said the investigation is focused on identifying the type of explosive materials that were placed in the devices and finding out the “country of origin of the shipment and where the booby traps were placed.”

The official said it was unlikely that the lithium batteries inside the devices would have heated up and exploded.

“The explosion of lithium batteries causes a fire-like incident… which can cause minor burns, but The explosion of these devices was caused by highly explosive materials", he explained to the AFP.

A source close to Hezbollah, who asked not to be identified, had previously indicated to the AFP that “the pagers that exploded referred to a shipment recently imported by Hezbollah” that appears to have been “sabotaged at the source”.

After The New York Times reported that the pagers had been ordered from the Taiwanese manufacturer Gold Apollo, The company said they had been produced by its Hungarian partner BAC Consulting KFT.

The pager explosions represented a significant innovation in Israel's rich history of shadow warfare, he said. Barak Gonen, Senior lecturer at the Jerusalem College of Technology and former cybersecurity officer in the Israeli military.

The basic idea is similar to a Chinese scheme last decade that targeted American companies by “planting a new device the size of a grain of rice on the motherboards of the PCs they were using,” he said.

But with “this operation… the payload was not only command and control, but also included a detonator.”

Assuming Israel was the author“It is a very significant boost to Israeli deterrence”Said Kobi Michael, Senior Fellow at the Misgav Institute think tank and the Israel Institute for Security Studies.

Israel's enemies will now "check and recheck ten times before they get their hands on any kind of media or electronic platform," he said.

Just hours before the pagers exploded, Israel had broadened the aims of the Gaza war to include its fight against Hezbollah, but several analysts said the timing of the blasts may have reflected fears that the Lebanese group would discover and foil the operation.

(With information from AFP)
Source: INFOBAE