Terrorist group Hezbollah is claiming that eight people have died and dozens are injured after pagers used by its troops exploded.
Lebanon's health minister Firass Abiad reportedly claimed that 2,750 people were injured, over 200 critically, after the pagers across Lebanon reportedly heated up and then exploded. Mojtaba Amani, Iran's ambassador to the country was reportedly also injured.
The Lebanese Red Cross has deployed 130 ambulances and more than 500 EMTs to deal with the aftermath. It has issued an urgent call for blood donors in the country.
A Hezbollah representative told Al Jazeera that “pagers belonging to employees of various Hezbollah units and institutions exploded.” Video footage of the explosions suggests that the pagers were rigged with explosives, rather than having the batteries shorted out to cause a fire, which would be a much slower process involving heating before any explosion.
Earlier in the year, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah warned the organization to stop using smartphones as these could be hacked and advised switching to pagers. That strategy doesn't appear to have worked, as the recent incidents suggest that the pagers themselves may have been compromised.
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It wouldn't be the first time this has happened. In 1996, Israeli intelligence agents killed Hamas' chief bomb maker Yahya Ayyash by implanting explosives in his mobile phone and detonating it during a call. But the scale of Tuesday's attack suggests that Hezbollah has undergone a supply chain attack that makes SolarWinds look like a minor inconvenience.
As post-Snowden leaks have shown, it's perfectly easy for governments to intercept technology purchases and add software or whatever else they like. But to do this on such a large scale indicates an unprecedented intelligence coup.
Hezbollah has been launching attacks on Israel over the last year with Hamas ever since the latter terrorist group staged an attack on Israel last year.
The Israeli Defense Forces had no response at the time of publication. ®