A strike on Hezbollah’s stronghold in Lebanon’s capital Beirut on Friday (September 20, 2024) killed eight people and wounded dozens of others, with a source close to the movement saying a top military leader was dead.

The Israeli military said it had conducted a “targeted strike”, while the Lebanese health ministry said the attack had killed eight people and wounded 59 more.

Requesting anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, the source close to Hezbollah said the strike on the militant group’s stronghold in south Beirut had killed the head of its elite Radwan unit, Ibrahim Aqil.

The air strike is the third to hit the southern suburbs of Beirut since the start of the Israel-Hamas war on October 7, with the focus of the violence shifting dramatically this week from Gaza to Lebanon.

Earlier this year, strikes blamed on Israel killed a top commander of Hezbollah, Fuad Shukr, and a leader of its allied Palestinian militant group Hamas, Saleh al-Aruri.

“The Israeli air strike killed Radwan Force commander Ibrahim Aqil, its armed force’s second-in-command after Fuad Shukr,” the source close to Hezbollah said.

Hezbollah has not officially confirmed his death, but it said after the strike that it had hit an Israeli intelligence base it claimed was responsible for unspecified “assassinations”.

The United States had offered a $7 million reward for information on Aqil, describing him as a “principal member” of the organisation that claimed the bombing of the US embassy in Beirut in 1983 that killed 63 people.

Footage posted on social media and verified by AFP showed smoke rising over southern Beirut on Friday.

Communication device explosions

Israeli troops and Hezbollah fighters have battled each other along the Israel-Lebanon border since Hamas sparked the war in Gaza with its October 7 attack.

The focus of Israel’s firepower for nearly a year has been on Gaza, but with Hamas much weakened, the focus of the war has shifted dramatically to Israel’s northern border.

Months of near-daily border clashes have killed hundreds in Lebanon, most of them fighters, and dozens in Israel, and forced thousands on both sides to flee their homes.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, Hezbollah was hit by an unprecedented attack that it has blamed on Israel, though Israel has yet to comment.

The attack saw thousands of Hezbollah operatives’ communication devices explode across two days, killing 37 people and wounding thousands more.

Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah vowed on Thursday that Israel would face retribution for the blasts.

Earlier Friday, Israel said Hezbollah had fired dozens of rockets from Lebanon following air strikes which destroyed dozens of the militant group’s launchers.

Israel announced this week it was shifting its war objectives to its northern border with Lebanon.

Speaking to troops on Wednesday, Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said: “Hezbollah will pay an increasing price” as Israel tries to “ensure the safe return” of its citizens to border areas.

“We are at the start of a new phase in the war,” he said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meanwhile delayed his scheduled departure to the United States, where he is due to address the UN General Assembly, by a day, with an official citing the situation on the northern front.

Earlier Friday, Hezbollah said it targeted at least six Israeli military bases with salvos of rockets after overnight bombardment that people in south Lebanon described as among the fiercest so far.

‘Fear of wider war’

Residents of Marjayoun, a Lebanese town close to the border, said the overnight bombardment was among the heaviest since the border clashes began last October.

“We were very scared, especially for my grandchildren,” said Nuha Abdo, 62. “We were moving them from one room to another.”

Clothing store owner Elie Rmeih, 45, counted more than 50 strikes.

“It was a terrifying scene and unlike anything we have experienced since the escalation began.

“We live in fear of a wider war, you don’t know where to go.”

Calls for restraint

International mediators have been scrambling to stop the Gaza war from turning into an all-out regional conflict.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who has been scrambling to salvage efforts for a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal, called for restraint on all sides.

“We don’t want to see any escalatory actions by any party” that would endanger the goal of a Gaza ceasefire, he said.

Hamas’s October 7 attacks that sparked the Gaza war resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians, on the Israeli side, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures that include hostages killed in captivity.

Out of 251 hostages seized by militants, 97 are still held in Gaza, including 33 the Israeli military says are dead.

Israel’s retaliatory military offensive has killed at least 41,272 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to figures provided by the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry. The United Nations has acknowledged the figures as reliable.

A communication device on the ground as Lebanese Army forces (not in picture) prepare to destroy it in a controlled explosion, in southern Lebanon between the villages of Burj al Muluk and Klayaa, on September 19, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AFP

On Sunday (September 15, 2024), Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, told his security Cabinet that he would do whatever necessary to make sure that the 70,000 Israelis displaced from the northern border villages by the fighting with Hezbollah, return home. Two days later, on Tuesday (September 17, 2024), in the late afternoon, hundreds of pagers, a low-tech messaging device, started exploding simultaneously across Lebanon and parts of Syria. At least 12 people were killed and over 2,800 were injured. A day later, on Wednesday (September 18, 2024), walkie-talkies and other electronic devices exploded in Lebanon, leaving 20 more dead and at least 450 others injured.

The explosions mostly hit Hezbollah, the Shia militia group backed by Iran which has been using pagers and walkie-talkies for communication among its ranks. Hezbollah immediately blamed Israel for the attack. Iran accused Israel of mass murder in Lebanon. Several others raised questions about weaponising civilian communication devices. Lebanon’s health officials said there were at least two children among the dead and that they can’t say with certainty how many of the victims were civilians and how many of them were Hezbollah members. Israel has neither confirmed nor denied its role in the explosions — its standard response when it comes to controversial overseas operations. But if Israel is really behind the attack, the question is how they pulled an attack of this scale off.

Taiwanese connection

Initially there were different theories pointing to different possibilities, including cyber warfare and supply-side penetration to tamper with the devices. Most of the pagers that exploded were AR924s that carried the brand name of Gold Apollo, a Taiwan-based company founded in 1995. After Tuesday’s (September 17, 2024) explosions, Gold Apollo issued a statement, saying it was not involved in the production of the pagers in question. “The product was not ours. It was only that it had our brand on it,” Gold Apollo founder and president, Hsu Ching-kuang, told reporters at the company’s office in New Taipei on Wednesday (September 18, 2024).

In the statement, the company said the AR924 model pagers were manufactured by BAC Consulting KFT, a Hungarian company. “Gold Apollo has established a long-term partnership with BAC Consulting”, and it has authorised “BAC to use our brand trademark for product sales in specific regions, but the design and manufacturing of the products are entirely handled by BAC,” the short statement said. Gold Apollo did not offer any details about its contract with BAC.

Hungarian connection

BAC Consulting, based in Budapest, operates in “environmental, political and development projects”, according to the company’s LinkedIn page, which has 303 followers as of Thursday (September 19, 2024). The page has no reference to the company’s involvement in manufacturing of electronic devices. It says BAC works to find “innovative solutions” to tackle challenges of “development, international affairs and environment”. Cristiana Rosaria Bársony-Arcidiacono, a 49-year-old PhD in particle physics, is the CEO of the company.

According to Ms. Bársony-Arcidiacono’s LinkedIn profile, she has advocated “environmental and social causes for developing and fragile countries” and has published articles in science journals. She did her PG masters in SOAS, London, and a diploma in politics from the London School of Economics and Political Science. But what does a particle physics PhD with experience in the fields of environmental and developmental consulting have to do with pager manufacturing? “I don’t make the pagers. I am just the intermediate. I think you got it wrong,” Ms. Bársony-Arcidiacono told U.S. broadcaster NBC on the phone. But she did not say BAC was not involved. And if Gold Apollo is to be believed, the little-known Budapest-based company that claims to be working in the fields of development and environment consulting was designing and manufacturing Taiwanese pagers and selling them to Hezbollah in Lebanon and parts of Syria. And they exploded at a critical juncture of the Hezbollah-Israel war. Both the knowns and unknowns of the explosion saga point to bigger behind-the-scenes players.

The hidden hand

According to a New York Times report, which cites defence and intelligence officials, BAC Consulting was a front company of the Israeli intelligence agencies. The report says Israeli intelligence officials set up three shell companies, including BAC, which was formally registered in Hungary in 2022. Hezbollah was wary of using cell phones, fearing Israeli penetration. They turned to pagers for communication, and Israel established a company to make those pagers — with inbuilt PETN (pentaerythritol tetranitrate) explosives, and a switch to detonate them remotely.

The back-to-back explosions have dealt a blow to Hezbollah, whose senior commander Fuad Shukr was assassinated by Israel on July 30 in Beirut. Israel has once again demonstrated its willingness and capability to take great risks in attacking its rivals. But with Hezbollah vowing vengeance, tensions on Israel’s northern border are likely to flare up in coming days.

The United Nations Security Council will meet on Friday over the pager blasts in Lebanon targeting militant group Hezbollah, said Slovenia’s U.N. Ambassador Samuel Zbogar, president of the 15-member council for September.

The meeting was requested by Algeria on behalf of Arab states, he said.

Earlier today, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that the pager blasts targeting Hezbollah indicate “a serious risk of a dramatic escalation in Lebanon and everything must be done to avoid that escalation.”

“Obviously the logic of making all these devices explode is to do it as a pre-emptive strike before a major military operation,” he told reporters ahead of the annual gathering of world leaders at the U.N. General Assembly.

He also said that it was very important not to weaponize civilian objects. Guterres “urges all concerned actors to exercise maximum restraint to avert any further escalation,” his spokesman Stephane Dujarric later said in a statement.

– Reuters