From the Liveblog of
Tuesday, September 17, 2024
Reports: Mossad rigged pager batteries with explosives, devices were imported 5 months ago
Gianluca Pacchiani is the Arab affairs reporter for The Times of Israel
Sky News Arabia quotes sources saying that today’s large-scale pager attack in Lebanon was possible because the Mossad spy agency got hold of Hezbollah’s communication devices before they were handed over to the terror group.
The Israeli spy agency placed a quantity of PETN, a highly explosive material, on the batteries of the devices, and detonated them by raising the temperature of the batteries from afar, the source says.
The Wall Street Journal reported earlier that some Hezbollah members felt their pagers heating up and disposed of them before the series of explosions that killed at least nine and injured about 2,800 people.
Al Jazeera quotes a Lebanese security source saying that the weight of the explosive placed in each device was below 20 grams, and that the pagers that were blown up were imported five months ago. An investigation is being conducted into how the explosive charge was activated, the source adds.
