Israel put explosives in thousands of pagers Hezbollah imported, reports say

News/ World (Kumasi, Ghana) Sep 18 ( Futball Surgery News)- Many people wondered how just after an unprecedented Hezbollah pager explosions accross Lebanon, the Middle East militant group would warned Israel of a pay back late Tuesday night.

Reports are trying to shape the world’s understanding about the attack and the aftermath warning by Hezbollah on its battlefield enemies.

According to reports, Israel is responsible for the Tuesday’s explosive attack killing at least nine people and injuring nearly 3,000 that shock the Middle East in this time that the region is in peak of crisis.

The war between Ukraine and Russia is heating the Middle East, and Israel and Hamas conflict seems to be galvanizing the region into something the world never expected.

And in the course of these wars, somehow, Israel’s long standing conflict with Hezbollah is re-manifesting to cause unprecedented tension, fear and panic in Middle East.

A Reuters and US media latched onto reports are pointing Israel as the brain behind Hezbollah pager explosions across Lebanon.

Israel planted explosives inside thousands of pagers imported by Hezbollah months before Tuesday’s unprecedented attack in Lebanon, according to sources cited by Reuters and US media.

The operation, which the Lebanese group blamed on Israel’s spy agency the Mossad, marked a major security breach. Thousands of pagers detonated across Lebanon and also in Syria, killing nine people and wounding almost 3,000 others, including the group’s fighters and Iran’s envoy to Beirut. Lebanon’s health minister, Firass Abiad, said a young girl was among the dead, and that more than 200 people had critical injuries.

Hezbollah accused Israel of being behind the blasts. It said it was carrying out a “security and scientific investigation” into the causes of the blasts and Israel would receive “its fair punishment”. The Lebanese information minister, Ziad Makary, condemned the attack as an “Israeli aggression”.

The Israeli military has not commented directly on the blasts but said senior commanders had held a situational assessment “focusing on readiness in both offence and defence in all arenas”.

The Taiwanese manufacturer linked to the pagers that exploded said the devices were made by a company in Europe.

Images of the pagers emerged in the aftermath with stickers on the back appearing consistent with pagers made by the Taiwanese company Gold Apollo, according to analysis by Reuters.

On Wednesday, the company’s founder, Hsu Ching-kuang, denied it had made the pagers, saying they were manufactured by a company in Europe that had the right to use its brand. “The product was not ours. It was only that it had our brand on it,” he said. “We are a responsible company. This is very embarrassing.”

The blasts appeared to exploit the low-tech pagers that Hezbollah has adopted in order to prevent the targeted assassinations of its members, who could be tracked by mobile phone signals. Those wounded in the attack included Iran’s ambassador to Beirut, Mojtaba Amani, according to reports.

A Hezbollah source said they believed the attack was in response to an alleged assassination attempt by the Shia militia on a former top Israeli defence official, revealed on Tuesday by the Israeli Shin Bet security agency.

Hospitals across Lebanon were overwhelmed with an influx of patients, and a field hospital was set up in the southern city of Tyre to accommodate the wounded. The sound of ambulance sirens was constant in Lebanon’s capital city more than three hours after the initial attack.

US officials are trying to de-escalate tensions between the two sides and remain concerned that the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, could order a ground invasion of Lebanon. The attack came hours after Israel announced it was broadening its aims in the war sparked by the Hamas attacks on 7 October to include its fight against Hezbollah along the border with Lebanon.

Hezbollah confirmed in an earlier statement that the deaths included at least two of its fighters and a young girl. Later media reports said the son of the Hezbollah MP Ali Ammar also died in the explosions.

The pagers exploded in southern Lebanon, the southern suburbs of Beirut known as Dahiyeh and the eastern Bekaa Valley – all Hezbollah strongholds.

One Hezbollah official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the detonation was the group’s “biggest security breach” since the Gaza conflict erupted on 7 October, when Hamas launched attacks in southern Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking about 250 people hostage.

Jonathan Panikoff, the US government’s former deputy national intelligence officer on the Middle East, said: “This would easily be the biggest counterintelligence failure that Hezbollah has had in decades.”

The apparent sabotage attack follows months of targeted assassinations by Israel against senior Hezbollah leaders and has ratcheted up tensions between Israel and Hezbollah. An uneasy calm had prevailed in the past three weeks when both parties had appeared to step back from the brink of a regional war after a limited Hezbollah response in late August to Israel’s assassination of its top military commander, Fuad Shukr, in Beirut.

The attack also threatens to derail efforts by the US to prevent Iran, which backs Hezbollah, from retaliating against Israel for the July bombing in Tehran that killed the Hamas political leader, Ismail Haniyeh.

The US state department spokesperson, Matthew Miller, said it was “too early to say” how it would affect Gaza ceasefire talks. He told a briefing the US was not involved and did not know who was responsible.

Hamas described the attack as an “escalation” that would lead to Israel’s defeat.