Tel Aviv [Israel], September 18: Reuters on September 18 quoted an informed source as saying that the Israeli intelligence agency (Mossad) may have planted explosives in thousands of pagers ordered by Hezbollah.
Sources say Mossad may have been involved in the September 17 explosion of a series of pagers in Lebanon that killed nine people and injured more than 2,800.
Reuters quoted a Lebanese security source as saying that Hezbollah had ordered 5,000 pagers made by Taiwan-based Gold Apollo Company. The model, believed to be the AP924, can receive wireless text messages but cannot make calls.
Hezbollah has been using pagers as a low tech means of communication to avoid being tracked by Israel. A senior Lebanese source said Mossad intelligence had tampered with the pagers and modified them to install a circuit board containing explosives that would be detonated upon receiving a code, Reuters reported.
The source said 3,000 pagers exploded when a coded message was sent to them, triggering the explosives. Another source said there were 3 grams of explosives in the pagers and that Hezbollah did not detect them for months.
It is unclear when Hezbollah received the pagers. Earlier this year, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah severely restricted the use of the phones, saying they were vulnerable to Israeli spying, according to The New York Times .
After the pager blasts, Hezbollah pledged to retaliate against Israel.
Israel has not commented on the incident.
A Hezbollah official said it was the "biggest security incident" the group has faced in nearly a year of escalating tensions with Israel. Meanwhile, Jonathan Panikoff, a former US government national intelligence official for the Middle East, said it could be Hezbollah's biggest counterintelligence failure in decades.
Source: Thanh Nien Newspaper
