Israel planted explosives in 5,000 pagers used by Hezbollah

by Laila Bassam and Maya Gebeily

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Mossad planted small amounts of explosives in 5,000 beepers that Hezbollah had ordered months before Tuesday’s blasts, a Lebanese security source and another source told Reuters.

Twelve people, including two children, died and nearly 3,000 others were injured, many of them Hezbollah members, when the pagers they use to communicate exploded across Lebanon on Tuesday.

The Lebanese Shiite movement, which accused Israel of being behind the explosions, has vowed retaliation. The Israeli army has not commented.

According to statements made to Reuters by several sources, the project had been in development for several months.

The Lebanese security source said Hezbollah had ordered 5,000 pagers manufactured by the Taiwan-based Gold Apollo company.

Gold Apollo said it did not manufacture the devices itself but that they were manufactured by BAC, a partner based in Budapest, Hungary, under a licensing agreement.

“These products were not ours. Only our brand was written (on these devices),” Gold Apollo founder Hsu Ching-Kuan said on Wednesday.

According to the Lebanese security source, the devices were modified by Israeli intelligence “at the production level.”

“The Mossad placed a card containing an explosive material receiving a code inside the device. It is very difficult to detect (this system) by any means,” the source said.

Three thousand of these beepers exploded when a coded message was sent to them, which simultaneously activated the explosives, the source added.

Another security source told Reuters that up to three grams of explosives were hidden in the new beepers and that they had “gone undetected” by Hezbollah for months.

Israel did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A Hezbollah official, who wished to remain anonymous, said earlier that the pager explosion was the “biggest security breach” the group had faced in nearly a year of war with Israel.

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah is scheduled to deliver a speech on Thursday, the Iranian-backed Lebanese Shiite movement said.

(With Phil Stewart and Matt Spetalnick in Washington and Ben Blanchard in Taipei; French version by Camille Raynaud and Bertrand Boucey, edited by Blandine Hénault)