According to a Lebanese source familiar with the device’s components, the batteries from the walkie-talkies used by the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah that exploded this week were laced with a highly explosive compound known as PETN.
The shockingly coordinated and devastatingly effective attacks, widely seen as the work of Israel’s Mossad intelligence service, wounded thousands of militants on Tuesday and Wednesday, not to mention scores of civilians.
Security officials and experts earlier this week theorized that Israeli spies had managed to infiltrate the supply chain and plant a small amount of explosives in the communications equipment before it was delivered to Lebanon sometime this spring.
The Lebanese security source’s assessment appears to confirm the speculation.
The source explained to Reuters that the way the explosive material was incorporated into the battery packs of the Halcyon communications devices made it extremely difficult to detect.
A photo taken in the southern suburbs of Beirut on September 18, 2024, shows the remains of exploded beepers on display at an unknown location
A man bleeds after his pager explodes in Beirut, Lebanon
PETN, short for Pentaerythritol tetranitrate, is a widely used chemical explosive that has many similarities to nitroglycerin.
It is commonly used in detonating cords and directed charges, and is deployed in military operations in the form of weapons such as the Semtex plastic explosive.
The fabric has two key properties that make it a very attractive option for both military and industrial use.
First, PETN has an extremely high detonation velocity and can blast shrapnel in ammunition at speeds of up to 8,000 meters per second.
The power of PETN explosives allows them to have a devastating effect, ripping apart their targets while delivering a powerful shock.
Secondly, it is a relatively stable substance and very reliable. When stored and preserved correctly, it can be used under all kinds of conditions..
Ironically, it was Hezbollah’s fear of the security risks of modern technology that allowed Israel to target the group’s members with PETN.
Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah said in February that smartphones, which are much harder to physically manipulate, are “more dangerous than Israeli spies” because they can be used to track their users, gather intelligence and carry out cyberattacks.
In a televised speech on February 13, Nasrallah gave strict orders to his supporters and sympathizers to break, bury or store their phones in an iron box so they could be replaced with pagers and walkie-talkies.
A few days later, Hezbollah placed an order for thousands of units of the old communications equipment.
Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah declared in February that phones were “more dangerous than Israeli spies” and ordered his followers to break, bury or hide them.
The shocking incident left dozens of Hezbollah members seriously wounded in southern Lebanon and the capital Beirut.
A hand shows the destroyed pager or pager that exploded on September 17, 2024
The exact method by which the pagers were sabotaged has still not been verified.
But a senior Lebanese security source told Reuters earlier this week that it appeared the booby traps distributed to thousands of Hezbollah members had been modified “at production level.”
“The Mossad has injected a board into the device with explosive material that receives a code. It is very difficult to detect it in any way. Even with any device or scanner,” the source said.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, thousands of pagers and radios exploded as a coded message was sent to them.
It appears the code caused the devices to beep or vibrate, requiring the user to press a button to cancel the alarm, thus activating the detonator.
Ordnance experts say videos and eyewitness descriptions of the explosions appear to support the assumption that the explosives were mixed with a small amount of explosives.
A former British Army officer who defused bombs explained that an explosive consists of five main parts: a container, a battery, a trigger mechanism, a detonator and an explosive charge.
“A pager already has three,” explained the former officer, who asked not to be identified because he now works as a consultant for clients in the Middle East.
“You just need to add the detonator and the charge.”
“If you look at the video, the size of the detonation is comparable to that of an electric detonator alone or a detonator with an extremely small explosive charge,” said Sean Moorhouse, a former British Army officer and expert in defusing explosives.
This security footage shows the moment a man’s pager exploded in a supermarket
Pagers that Hezbollah members use for vital communications exploded Tuesday, wounding thousands. Also exploding on Wednesday were radios and walkie-talkies, like the one pictured in the hand of the man standing above the victim.
Security experts, regional analysts and military officials have almost unanimously blamed the Mossad and elements of the Israeli military, saying no other party had the capacity or motive to carry out such an attack.
Avi Melamed, a former Israeli intelligence official and regional analyst, told MailOnline: ‘Hezbollah fell back on these devices because it thought they would be safer for its fighters than GPS-controlled phones.
‘In one large-scale attack, with both significant operational and psychological consequences, these very low-tech devices were used against them, only adding to the stress and embarrassment for the leaders.
‘The characteristics of the incident indicate the use of advanced technologies for disruption, takeovers of communication systems and remote control with an exceptionally high level of synchronization.
“The mounting evidence suggests that the devices were pretreated, not by malicious software. While Israel has not taken responsibility for the attack, and is unlikely to do so, there is no doubt in the regional discourse that Israel was behind it.”
Relatives mourn the young girl Fatima Abdallah, who was among those killed in the pager explosions
Chaotic scenes in hospitals in Lebanon are seen on Tuesday evening after explosions
Professor Andreas Krieg, a Middle East expert and senior lecturer at King’s College London’s School of Security Studies, said: ‘Regardless of how they got it or how they acquired this device, Israel has managed to infiltrate and compromise the supply chain.
“Tampering with a physical device that is then distributed through Hezbollah’s network is quite exceptional because it requires coordination and likely someone on the inside who is cooperating.
‘If you look at the broader picture that has emerged in recent months, it appears that the Israelis have done a fairly good job of compromising their enemies on the intelligence front, because they know who they have targeted and how accurately they have targeted them.
For example, if you look at the way Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed in Tehran, it suggests that Hamas, Hezbollah and the Iranians are heavily infiltrated. There may also be certain people who are collaborating with the Israelis.’
The Mossad is known for carrying out sophisticated operations.
The organization is blamed for a series of cyber attacks and is believed to be responsible for the assassination of a leading Iranian scientist with a remote-controlled machine gun.
But the pager attack would be one of the agency’s most complex and audacious operations and “by far the greatest Hezbollah counterintelligence failure in decades,” said Jonathan Panikoff, the U.S. government’s former deputy national intelligence officer for the Middle East.
