The Lebanese health ministry says 12 people, including two children, are dead and thousands injured after wireless devices – pagers – exploded across the country on Tuesday.
So, what is Hezbollah, who is behind the attack, and how did they do it?
Here’s what we know so far.
Did Israel detonate Hezbollah pagers in Lebanon and why did they explode?
Reuters reports that two sources, one from the Lebanese military, say Israel’s Mossad security services were behind the attack.
The news agency says it’s been told that Israeli spies planted explosives inside 5,000 pagers which Hezbollah members were using to communicate.
If that is true, it implies that Israeli operatives somehow gained access to the devices while they were being manufactured or distributed to Hezbollah members.
Israel has not commented on the allegations.
Who made the exploding Hezbollah pagers?
According to Reuters’ Lebanese source, the devices were “Gold Apollo” branded – suggesting they were made by a company in Taiwan.
But Gold Apollo denies manufacturing the pagers. It says it licensed the trademark to a Hungarian firm called BAC, which it claims produced the items.
Gold Apollo’s boss, Hsu Ching Kuang, described the situation as “very embarrassing” and insisted “there was nothing in those devices that we had manufactured or exported to [BAC]”.
What is a pager and why was Hezbollah using them?
Pagers are wireless one-way communication devices that allow short messages to be sent to someone remotely using radio signals.
They peaked in popularity in the 1990s, but have been mostly replaced by mobile phones.
It’s understood Hezbollah was using pagers instead of phones as the more basic technology is, in theory, less vulnerable to cyber-attacks.
According to Reuters’ Lebanese source, the pagers in yesterday’s incident had only been brought into the country earlier this year.
What is Hezbollah and what is its relationship with Israel?
Hezbollah is an Iran-backed military and political group based in Lebanon, which borders Israel.
Hezbollah does not rule Lebanon, though members of its political arm sit in the Lebanese parliament. The group lost its majority in elections in 2022.
Hezbollah’s military wing is designated as a terror group by the UK, EU, US and Israel.
The organisation has been in conflict with Israel on-and-off since its creation in the 1980s, with all-out war breaking out several times – most notably in 2006, when thousands of people were killed or wounded.
In the 1980s, Hezbollah leaders issued a statement on “the necessity for the destruction of Israel”, vowing to “recognise no treaty with it, no cease fire, and no peace agreements”.
More recently, Hezbollah congratulated Palestinian groups including Hamas for their attack on Israel on 7 October 2023, in which 1,139 people were killed and 251 taken hostage.
Israel and Hezbollah have been in low-level conflict since 8 October, when the Lebanese group began firing rockets into the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, apparently in solidarity with Palestinians.
International observers have voiced concern about a possible escalation in hostilities in recent months.
Over the summer, Israel killed over a hundred Hezbollah members and dozens of civilians in a series of airstrikes inside Lebanon, displacing over 100,000 people from their homes.
Meanwhile, Hezbollah has fired hundreds of rockets into Israel, forcing tens of thousands of Israelis to evacuate from the north of the country.
Fears of escalation were further heightened on Monday when Israel announced that it had “updated the objectives of the war to include […] returning the residents of the north securely to their homes”.
Defence minister Yoav Gallant said that Hezbollah continuing to “tie itself” to Hamas meant that “the only way left to ensure the return of Israel’s northern communities to their homes will be via military action”.
The pager explosions took place within hours of these statements.
(Image credit: WAEL HAMZEH/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
