BEIRUT — Israel’s Mossad spy agency planted a small amount of explosives inside 5,000 Taiwan-made pagers ordered by the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah months before Tuesday’s detonations, a senior Lebanese security source and another source tell Reuters.
The plot appears to have been many months in the making, several sources tell Reuters.
The senior Lebanese security source says Hezbollah ordered 5,000 beepers made by Taiwan-based Gold Apollo, which several sources say were brought into the country in the spring.
The senior Lebanese security source identifies 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.
But the senior Lebanese source says 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 says.
The source says 3,000 of the pagers exploded when a coded message was sent to them, simultaneously activating the explosives.
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