Conflicts

9 people died and 2,750 others were injured by an explosion of their pager in Lebanon and Syria, an operation attributed to the Israeli secret services. The Taiwanese manufacturer indicates that the pagers came from Hungary.

This Tuesday, September 17, at 3:45pm, a message sent to several thousand pagers (the mobile phone's ancestor) caused them to explode. It seemed to come from the leadership of Hezbollah. And it was this Palestinian organization, which has many representatives in Lebanon and Syria, that seemed to have been targeted. Moreover, several influential leaders of Hezbollah are among the victims. As well as the Iranian ambassador to Lebanon, who was injured. The current toll is 9 dead, possibly 12, and more than 2,750 injured, including about 200 in serious or critical condition. Among the victims, a 10-year-old girl was killed by her father's pager. This type of device had been recommended by Hezbollah to its members to avoid hacking phones.

Made in Hungary

All these sudden and spontaneous explosions created chaos in Lebanon, particularly in Beirut, in the south of the country and in the Bekaa valley in the northeast. Hospitals were overloaded in a country bankrupted by corruption and suffering tensions with its Israeli neighbor. The Gold Apollo brand pager did not come from its Taiwanese manufacturer. The latter indicated in a press release that the batches of Apollo Rugged Pager AR924 that exploded had been produced and sold by its partner, BAC, based in Hungary. In any case, if Israel is indeed behind this operation, its secret services managed to infiltrate Hezbollah's logistics circuit to traffic thousands of pagers.

(MH with Olivier Duquesne – Source: Le Soir – Picture: © Jakez via WikiCommons licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license)