JAKARTA - Hacking and planting of explosives so far are suspected to be the cause of the blast wave of the pager that rocked Lebanon, with militant group Hezbollah accusing Israel of being behind the incident that claimed lives and thousands more injured.
A wave of explosions rocked southern Lebanon, the southern suburbs of Beirut known as Dahiyeh and the eastern Bekaa Valley, all of which were Hezbollah's strongholds.
"We consider Israel's enemies to be fully responsible for this criminal aggression," Hezbollah said in a statement late Tuesday.
"These dangerous and criminal enemies will surely receive commensurate retaliation for this sinful aggression, both from places that are taken into account and those that are not taken into account," the statement added.
Hezbollah did not say what they believed was the cause of the explosion of the pager. Meanwhile, the Israeli military was reluctant to respond to questions about the explosion.
The Wall Street Journal quoted a source as saying the affected devices came from a new shipment Hezbollah received in recent days.
Meanwhile, an official Hezbollah also told the newspaper, some people felt the pager heating up before the explosion.
The lithium-ion battery that is too hot can catch fire, but experts say hacking the pager and making it too hot usually won't cause such an explosion.
A former British military ammunition expert, who asked not to be named, told the BBC the pager was likely to contain between 10g and 20g of military-class high-power explosives, hidden inside a fake electronic component.
After being armed with a signal, called an alphanumerical text message, the next person using the device will trigger the explosives, the expert said.
The New York Times quoted American officials and other officials briefed on the operation as reporting that Israel placed explosives in a number of Taiwan-made pagers imported into Lebanon and aimed at Hezbollah, as quoted by CNN.
The explosives are planted next to the battery in each pager, and an embedded switch is used remotely, according to The New York Times.
CNN previously reported that the exploding pager had been purchased by Hezbollah in recent months, according to a Lebanese security source.
The device exploded simultaneously after receiving a message on Tuesday afternoon.
David Kennedy, a former US National Security Agency intelligence analyst, said the explosion seen in the video shared online seemed "too great to be a direct and long-range hack that would burden the pager and cause lithium battery explosions."
"Most likely Israel has a human operator in Hezbollah. The Pager will be implanted with explosives and will likely only explode when certain messages are received," he said.
"The complexity needed to do this is extraordinary. Many different intelligence and execution components are needed. Human intelligence (HUMINT) will be the main method used to do this, along with intercepting supply chains to make modifications to pagers," he added.
Lebanese Health Ministry said the death toll from the blast wave rose from eight to nine on Tuesday night while the number injured remained at 2,750.
Separately, Middle Eastern analyst at Britain-based think tank Chatham House Lina Khatib told the BBC: "Israel has been involved in cyber operations against Hezbollah for several months, but these security breaches are the biggest on a scale."
Meanwhile, Nicholas BLAnford, a senior Beirut-based researcher from the American think tank Atlantic Council, said: "Israel in one attack has left hundreds or even thousands of Hezbollah fighters ineffective in fighting, in some cases permanently."
Along with yesterday's incident, Lebanese authorities have urged residents who have pagers to throw them away and warn hospitals to be "high alert," and ask health workers to immediately report themselves to work to help deal with "a large number of injured people."
The English, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, and French versions are automatically generated by the AI. So there may still be inaccuracies in translating, please always see Indonesian as our main language. (system supported by DigitalSiber.id)
