Reuters has learned of pagers being handed out to Hezbollah members hours before the detonation
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- Reuters has learned of pagers being handed out to Hezbollah members hours before the detonation
The Shiite movement Hezbollah handed its members Gold Apollo brand pagers hours before thousands of the devices exploded across Lebanon. This was reported by Reuters on September 20.
A source said a member of the group received a new pager on Monday, which exploded the next day while still in the box.
A security source said Hezbollah had been scrutinizing pager deliveries since 2022, but explosives are very difficult to detect "by any device or scanner."
The agency said Hezbollah has thwarted previous Israeli operations targeting devices imported by the group from abroad, from private landlines to ventilation units in the group's offices.
"There are a few electronic problems that we managed to detect, but not the pagers. They fooled us, hats off to the enemy," the agency's interlocutor concluded.
On September 21, the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) told Izvestia about the risk of escalation on the Lebanese-Israeli border escalating into a regional conflict. The UN mission is working intensively to de-escalate tensions that could potentially trigger a wider conflict.
On September 17, multiple people were seriously injured in pager explosions in Beirut and southern Lebanon. The next day, various wireless devices exploded in cars and on motorcycles. These were portable radios, which were different from pagers. Lebanese authorities and Hezbollah representatives blamed Israel for the explosions.
The situation in the Middle East escalated on the morning of October 7, 2023, when the Palestinian radical movement Hamas subjected Israel's territory to a massive rocket attack from the Gaza Strip, as well as invaded border areas in the south of the country and took hostages. On the same day, Israel began retaliatory strikes.
