Reuters: Israel planted explosives in Taiwanese Hezbollah pagers

Logo of the Taiwanese company Gold Apollo, photo: Getty Images

Israel’s Mossad secret service planted a small amount of explosives in 5,000 Taiwanese pagers ordered by the Lebanese Hezbollah group months before the blasts.

Source: Reuters with reference to a high-ranking informant in the Lebanese security authorities and another source

Details: The details shed light on an unprecedented breach in Hezbollah’s security system that detonated thousands of pagers across Lebanon, killing nine people and injuring nearly 3,000, including the group’s fighters and Iran’s envoy to Beirut.

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Iran-backed Hezbollah vowed revenge against Israel, whose military declined to comment on the blasts.

Several sources told Reuters that the plot had been in the works for months.

A senior Lebanese security source said the group had ordered 5,000 pagers from Taiwanese company Gold Apollo, which several sources said were imported into the country in the spring.

A senior Lebanese security source provided a photograph of a model of the AP924 pager, which, like other pagers, wirelessly receives and displays text messages, but cannot make phone calls.

Hezbollah fighters use pagers as a low-tech means of communication in an attempt to avoid Israeli tracking of their location, two sources familiar with the group’s activities said.

But a senior Lebanese source said the devices had been modified by Israel’s spy service “at a production level”.

“The Mossad installed an explosive board in the device that receives the code. It is very difficult to detect in any way. Not even with any device or scanner,” the source said.

The source said 3,000 pagers went off when a coded message was sent to them, simultaneously activating the explosives.

Another security source told Reuters that the new pagers contained up to three grams of explosives, which went “undetected” by Hezbollah for months.