Hezbollah suspicions led to swift detonation of pagers – report

At least two Hezbollah members became suspicious of thousands of pagers procured by the Lebanese terrorist organization, prompting Israel to trigger the explosives embedded inside, according to the Arab-American news outlet Al-Monitor on Wednesday.

One of the suspecting terrorists was killed, while the other was said to have believed that the devices were damaged and planned to report this to his commanders.

Israel’s intelligence apparatus considered three options:
– to go to war with Hezbollah and blow up the devices according to the original plan,
– to detonate the devices before a ground war begins and inflicting as much damage as possible on Hezbollah’s logistics personnel, or
– to ignore the suspicions of Hezbollah’s people and risk exposing the plan.

The second option was eventually carried out, in an operation kept secret, even from the United States.

A US official told Al-Monitor that Israel did not notify its closest ally of the operation, only speaking about it in the aftermath.

Reports differed on the exact amount of pagers Hezbollah acquired to circumvent Israel hacking into operatives’ cell phones, with the figure ranging from three to five thousand devices.

Israel’s Mossad allegedly spent months planning the attack, inserting a reported 20 grams of PETN (Pentaerythritol tetranitrate) explosive material inside before it was distributed to Hezbollah operatives.

Made in Taiwan by Gold Apollo, the company said that it did not produce the beepers used in the operation, but rather by a company named BAC, which has a license to use its branding. Most of the devices were the AP924 model, although three additional Gold Apollo devices were also included in the shipment.

At least nine people were killed and thousands were injured in the pager explosions on Tuesday, which beeped in the afternoon before detonating.

Source » i24news.tv