Paging all terrorists!
Thousands of Hezbollah terrorists were injured in southern Lebanon on Tuesday when their new pagers all simultaneously exploded — causing horrifying wounds to their groins and hands as the devices detonated on their belts and in their pockets.
Lebanese officials said 2,800 people were injured and nine killed in what Hezbollah officials claimed was an attack by Israel.
Hezbollah — a Lebanese militant group that the US has designated as a terrorist organization — confirmed the wide-ranging attack on its operatives, including fighters and medics. One official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, called it the “biggest security breach” since the group began its near-daily attacks on Israel on Oct. 8.
The devices that detonated were all the latest models acquired by Hezbollah in recent months. They were distributed to members after Hezbollah’s leader warned his fighters not to carry cell phones — telling them they could be used to track their movements or carry out targeted strikes.
The Israeli spy agency Mossad allegedly intercepted the shipment five months ago and rigged them with pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN), a highly explosive material, sources told Sky News Arabia, according to a translation from Israeli media.
The explosive material was allegedly placed inside the pagers’ batteries and detonated by an external command that caused the batteries’ temperatures to overheat and trigger the explosion, the sources added.
Videos uploaded to social media show several incidents in which seemingly unaware men had devices in their pockets blow up, with the victims crying in pain as bystanders ran away.
One such video shows a man shopping at a local grocery store when an explosion occurs in his pocket, sending debris flying out of his pants as he falls to the floor.
Other videos circulating on social media show dozens of men in hospitals covered in burn wounds, with one man with his fingers blown off and another covering his bloody face.
Several of the men caught by the blasts could be seen covering their groins and thighs, which were likely wounded when the pagers went off in their pants.
Doctors could also be seen treating the injured men lying on cardboard mats in the hallway as the hospitals were quickly inundated Tuesday morning.
Israel has not commented on the attack, and US said it had no advance knowledge of any operation against Hezbollah.
Wild, international operations allegedly carried out by Israel against Iran and its proxies:
- On July 31st, 2024, Iran accused Israel of planting a bomb inside the Tehran facility housing former Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh, who died when it was detonated.
- In December 2020, Israel allegedly used a satellite-controlled machine gun equipped with “artificial intelligence” to kill Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who founded Iran’s nuclear program.
- In 2010, Massaoud Ali-Mohammadi and Majid Shahriari, two nuclear scientists in Tehran, were blown up by a remotely detonated bomb hooked up to a motorcycle.
- That same year, the Stuxnet cyberweapon devastated Iran’s nuclear program, with reports later confirming it was deployed in a joint effort by the US and Israel.
- In 1997, Hamas’ Khaled Meshaal was poisoned by Israeli agents in a botched operation that saw the terrorist receive the antidote in a move made to prevent the king of Jordan from walking away from a historic peace treaty.
The attack will have a significant impact on Hezbollah’s military effectiveness, Seth J. Frantzman at The Foundation for Defense of Democracies told The Post. The group is believed to have about 40,000 fighters.
“Hezbollah invests a great deal in its recruits and its members and views them as an elite force,” he said. “Thousands of members injured by exploding pagers will be a serious setback for Hezbollah on multiple levels.”
One Hezbollah official told the Wall Street Journal that some members felt their pagers heat up and disposed of them before they detonated.
Officials said at least 14 people were also wounded in Syria, with Navvar Saban, a security and conflict analyst at the Omran Center for Strategic Studies, saying those injured in Syria were members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in Syria.
“It’s thousands of assassination attempts at the same time that happened in different geographical areas,” Saba told Al Jazeera. “The psychological impact is huge. It’s going to affect Hezbollah.”
Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon, Mojtaba Amani, was also among those injured in the blasts, according to Tehran’s Mehr news agency.
Hezbollah officials claimed Israel was behind the pager attack. The Israeli military has not commented on the incident.
“We hold the Israeli enemy fully responsible for this criminal aggression,” Hezbollah said in a statement, vowing that Israel “will certainly receive its fair punishment for this sinful aggression.”
Lebanon’s Health Ministry called on health workers treating the wounded to remove their wireless devices.
Residents said the explosions continued to occur even 30 minutes after the initial blast.
Israel and Hezbollah have engaged in near-daily attacks over the border since the terror group began attacking the Jewish state in solidarity with Hamas.
With Post wires
