More than 1,000 people, including Hezbollah fighters and medics, were wounded on Tuesday when the pagers they use to communicate exploded across Lebanon, security sources told Reuters.
A Hezbollah official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the detonation of the pagers was the “biggest security breach” the group had been subjected to in nearly a year of war with Israel.
Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah have been engaged in cross-border warfare since the Gaza conflict erupted last October, the worst such escalation in years.
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah had called on his fighters a few months ago to stop using smartphones because Israel has the technology to infiltrate those devices, Khodr said.
βSo now theyβve resorted to this different communications system using pagers, and it seems they have been penetrated,β she said.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military, which has been exchanging fire with Hezbollah since October 8, the day after Israel began its war on Gaza.
Elijah Magnier, an independent military and political analyst, said Hezbollah relies heavily on pagers to prevent Israel from intercepting its communications, and he speculated that the pagers would have had to have been tampered with before being distributed to Hezbollah members.
Update:
We now have Hezbollahβs first statement about the explosions of communication devices in Lebanon.
βAt approximately 3:30pm [12:30 GMT] on Tuesday 09-17-2024, a number of message-receiving devices known as βpagersβ exploded, which were owned by a number of workers in various Hezbollah units and institutions,β the group said.
βThese explosions, the causes of which are still unknown, led to the martyrdom of a girl and two brothers and the injury of a large number of people with various injuries,β it added.
