Hezbollah handed out pagers hours before blasts — even after checks

Lebanon’s Hezbollah was still handing its members new Gold Apollo branded pagers hours before thousands blew up this week, two Lebanese security sources say, indicating the group was confident the devices were safe despite an ongoing sweep of electronic kit to identify threats.

One member of the Iranian-backed group received a new pager on Monday that exploded the next day while it was still in its box, says one of the sources. A pager given to a senior member just days earlier injured a subordinate when it detonated, the second source says.

Up to three grams of explosives hidden in the pagers had gone undetected for months by Hezbollah, Reuters reported earlier this week.

One of the security sources says it was very hard to detect the explosives “with any device or scanner.” The source did not specify what type of scanners Hezbollah had run the pagers through.

Rather than a specific suspicion of the pagers, the checks had been part of a routine “sweep” of its equipment, including communications devices, to find any indications that they were laced with explosives or surveillance mechanisms, one of the security sources says.