Live Update 
From the Liveblog of
Friday, September 20, 2024
From the Liveblog of
Friday, September 20, 2024
Lebanese source: Batteries of Hezbollah walkie-talkies were laced with explosive compound
A man holds a walkie-talkie device after he removed the battery during the funeral of persons killed when hundreds of paging devices exploded in an alleged Israeli attack on Hezbollah across Lebanon the previous day, in Beirut's southern suburbs on September 18, 2024. (Anwar Amro/AFP)
The batteries of the walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah that blew up this week were laced with a highly explosive compound known as PETN, a Lebanese source familiar with the device’s components tells Reuters.
The way the explosive material was integrated into the battery pack made it extremely difficult to detect, the source says.
Hundreds of walkie-talkies used by the group exploded on Wednesday, a day after thousands of Hezbollah’s pagers detonated across the group’s strongholds in Lebanon.
Pictures of the walkie-talkies that had exploded showed labels reading “ICOM” and “made in Japan”. Icom 6820.T has said it halted production a decade ago of the radio models identified in the attack, and that most of those still on sale were counterfeit.
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