INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Israel&s Mossad spy agency planted explosives inside 5,000 pagers imported by Lebanese group Hezbollah months before Tuesday&s detonations,
a senior Lebanese security source and another source told Reuters.The operation was an unprecedented Hezbollah security breach that saw
thousands of pagers detonate across Lebanon, killing nine people and wounding nearly 3,000 others, including the group&s fighters and Iran&s
envoy to Beirut.The Lebanese security source said the pagers were from Taiwan-based Gold Apollo, but the company said in a statement it did
not manufacture the devices
It said they were made by a company called BAC which has a licence to use its brand, but gave no more details.Iran-backed Hezbollah has
vowed to retaliate against Israel, whose military declined to comment on the blasts, Reuters reported.Hezbollah said in a statement on
Wednesday that &the resistance will continue today, like any other day, its operations to support Gaza, its people and its resistance which
is a separate path from the harsh punishment that the criminal enemy (Israel) should await in response to Tuesday&s massacre&.The plot
appears to have been many months in the making, several sources told Reuters.The senior Lebanese security source said the group had ordered
5,000 beepers from Gold Apollo, which several sources say were brought into the country earlier this year.Gold Apollo founder Hsu
Ching-Kuang said the pagers used in the explosion were made by a company in Europe that had the right to use the firm&s brand, the name of
which he could not immediately confirm
The company in a statement named BAC as the firm, but Hsu declined to comment on its location.&The product was not ours
It was only that it had our brand on it,& Hsu told reporters at the company&s offices in the northern Taiwanese city of New Taipei on
Wednesday.The senior Lebanese security source identified a photograph of the model of the pager, an AP924, which like other pagers
wirelessly receive and display text messages but cannot make telephone calls.Gold Apollo said in a statement that the AR-924 model was
produced and sold by BAC.Thousands of these pagers exploded simultaneously on Tuesday in Lebanon &We only provide brand trademark
authorisation and have no involvement in the design or manufacturing of this product,& the statement said
Hezbollah fighters have been using pagers as a low-tech means of communication in an attempt to evade Israeli location-tracking, two sources
familiar with the group&s operations told Reuters this year.But the senior Lebanese source said the devices had been modified by Israel&s
spy service &at the production level.&&The Mossad injected a board inside of the device that has explosive material that receives a code
It&s very hard to detect it through any means
Even with any device or scanner,& the source said.The source said 3,000 of the pagers exploded when a coded message was sent to them,
simultaneously activating the explosives.Another security source told Reuters that up to three grams of explosives were hidden in the new
pagers and had gone &undetected& by Hezbollah for months.Hsu said he did not know how the pagers could have been rigged to explode.Israeli
officials did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment.Images of destroyed pagers analysed by Reuters showed a format and
stickers on the back that were consistent with pagers made by Gold Apollo.Hezbollah was reeling from the attack, which left fighters and
others bloodied, hospitalized or dead
One Hezbollah official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the detonation was the group&s &biggest security breach& since the Gaza
conflict between Israel and Hezbollah ally Hamas erupted on Oct
7.&This would easily be the biggest counterintelligence failure that Hezbollah has had in decades,& said Jonathan Panikoff, the U.S
government&s former deputy national intelligence officer on the Middle East.Break Your PhonesIn February, Hezbollah drew up a war plan that
aimed to address gaps in the group&s intelligence infrastructure. Around 170 fighters had already been killed in targeted Israeli strikes
on Lebanon, including one senior commander and a top Hamas official in Beirut.In a televised speech on Feb
13, the group&s Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah sternly warned supporters that their phones were more dangerous than Israeli spies,
saying they should break, bury or lock them in an iron box.Instead, the group opted to distribute pagers to Hezbollah members across the
group&s various branches & from fighters to medics working in its relief services.The explosions maimed many Hezbollah members, according to
footage from hospitals reviewed by Reuters
Wounded men had injuries of varying degrees to the face, missing fingers and gaping wounds at the hip where the pagers were likely worn.&We
really got hit hard,& said the senior Lebanese security source, who has direct knowledge of the group&s probe into the explosions.The post
Israel planted explosives in 5,000 Hezbollah pagers, say sources first appeared on Ariana News.
