One day after hundreds of pagers widely used by Hezbollah simultaneously exploded in Lebanon, two-way radios used by the group detonated on Wednesday in what appeared to be a second wave of sophisticated, deadly attacks. The unprecedented series of explosions killed dozens of people, wounded more than 3,000, and deepened concerns about the scope of potentially-compromised personal electronic devices in use across the country.
The deadly blasts, which were concentrated in Hezbollah strongholds including southern Beirut suburbs, came as Israeli leaders again warned of expanding operations against Hamas allies Hezbollah across the border in Lebanon. Israel began moving troops to the border as a precautionary measure on Wednesday, AP reported, citing an Israeli official.
Hezbollah blamed the mass attack on Israel, with whom it has exchanged near-daily fire soon after the start of the war in Gaza, and vowed revenge.
During a hospital tour on Wednesday, Abiad said that many of the wounded suffered “severe injuries to the eyes” while others had limbs amputated. It remains unclear how many of the victims were linked to the Shia militant group.
The wounded have been sent to various hospitals in Lebanon to avoid overcrowding, Abiad said, adding that Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Syria and Egypt offered to help treat the patients.
UN rights chief Volker Turk on Wednesday said those responsible for the explosions are breaking the law and must be held accountable.
The “simultaneous targeting of thousands of individuals, whether civilians or members of armed groups, without knowledge of who was in possession of the targeted devices … violates international human rights law,” he said.
Here’s what we know:
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Remote attack
Israel has not commented on the unprecedented operation that saw Hezbollah operatives' walkie-talkies and pagers exploding in supermarkets, at funerals and on streets in consecutive days.
An unnamed US official said Washington was briefed following the remote attack on Tuesday.
A senior Lebanese security source told AP that Israel's Mossad intelligence agency planted explosives inside thousands of pagers imported by Hezbollah months before the deadly wave of detonations.
The Iran-backed militant group uses the low-tech devices instead of cell phones to avoid location-tracking and eavesdropping by Israel.
A Hezbollah official told AP that the exploding pagers were from a new brand that the group had not used before but did not provide the name of the supplier.
Calling Tuesday’s explosions its biggest security breach, Hezbollah asked its members to ditch their pagers shortly after they were detonated, according to the Washington Post.
In the wake of Wednesday's explosions, a Reuters reporter in the southern suburbs of Beirut said he saw Hezbollah members frantically taking out the batteries of any two-way radios on them that had not exploded, tossing the parts in metal barrels around them.
The deaths and wounded from the blasts are adding to Hezbollah’s growing list of casualties in its fight with Israel. The group has lost several high ranking commanders in targeted strikes carried out by the Israeli army in recent months.
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Taiwanese company Gold Apollo
The exploding pagers were traced back to Gold Apollo, a small Taiwanese manufacturer specialising in wireless communication devices located in New Taipei City.
Despite pictures circulating online showing the company’s name and trademark on the handheld devices that exploded on Tuesday, Gold Apollo quickly denied any involvement in their production.
In a statement released Wednesday, the company said the model linked to the deadly blasts – the AR-924 – was manufactured and sold by its Hungarian partner, BAC Consulting KFT.
Containing a rechargeable lithium battery, the AR-924 is advertised on Gold Apollo’s website as being “rugged” and can receive texts of up to 100 characters.
“According to the cooperation agreement, we authorize BAC to use our brand trademark for product sales in designated regions, but the design and manufacturing of the products are solely the responsibility of BAC,” the statement said.
In a press conference at company headquarters on Wednesday, Chairman Hsu Ching-kuang said Gold Apollo has a licensing agreement with Budapest-based BAC Consulting and started working with the company three years ago.
Taiwan’s ministry of economic affairs said Gold Apollo exported 260,000 pagers from the start of 2022 through August 2024, mainly to Europe and North America, and that it has no records of direct exports of Gold Apollo pagers to Lebanon.
In a statement sent to journalists, the ministry said that the pagers that exploded in Lebanon and Syria were made in Taiwan – contradicting Gold Apollo’s statement – and said they were likely modified by a third-party overseas, local media reported.
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Hungarian company BAC Consulting
Little information is available online about Gold Apollo’s business partner apart from an inaccessible web page and an address in the Hungarian capital.
According to Hungarian company registry Opten, BAC Consulting was founded in 2022.
Hsu told journalists that Gold Apollo’s main contact with BAC Consulting was an Austrian named “Tom” who manages the Hungarian company’s office in Taiwan. But FRANCE 24 could find no trace of the company’s registration with the ministry of economic affairs. It shows signs of being a shell company.
The Hungarian government said in a post on X Wednesday said BAC Consulting is a “trading intermediary, with no manufacturing or operational site in Hungary”, adding that the exploding pagers were never in the country.
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Explosives likely added post-production
In an interview with FRANCE 24 on Tuesday, cybersecurity expert Gérôme Billois said the most probable scenario in how the large-scale attack was carried out was by placing explosives in the pagers after they left the factory.
“Certainly an intelligence agency was aware of this order of pagers and they were able to intercept [them] after the production … to open the box very precisely, to change the battery or to add an explosive into the battery and then to change the software as well to allow this remote activation,” he said.
Despite the difficulty in intercepting the pagers somewhere along the supply chain before they arrive at their final destination, Billois said the task was feasible as spy agencies have carried out similar operations in the past.
Another possibility would be to rig the lithium batteries so they explode with a wireless signal, Billois said, but he said that scenario appears less likely.
Former US National Security Agency intelligence analyst David Kennedy appears to agree as he told CNN that the blasts appear to be too big for them to be a result of the batteries exploding.
“The pagers would have been implanted with explosives and likely only to detonate when a certain message was received,” CNN quoted him as saying.
According to the New York Times, the pagers were detonated remotely with help from a switch placed within the devices when they were switched on, and upon receiving messages.
Two-way radios targeted
Details of how two-way radios were detonated in the suburbs of Beirut and south Lebanon on Wednesday are yet to emerge.
Japanese firm Icom said Thursday that it was investigating after media reported that two-way radio devices bearing its logo were among those that exploded.
Icom said the wireless radio unit thought to be used in the attacks, IC-V82, was once manufactured for export including to the Middle East from 2004 to October 2014. But the production and shipment of its main unit ended about 10 years ago and batteries for the main units have also been discontinued.
Company executive Yoshiki Enomoto told Japanese television NTV the company could not confirm if the unit in question was Icom-made.“This specific device had a lot of fake copies out in the market,” he said, adding that company officials could only determine the device's authenticity by seeing its circuits.
(With AP, Reuters)
