Israel launched hundreds of airstrikes in southern and eastern Lebanon on Monday (September 23, 2024), killing 492 people, including 35 children and 58 women, as the Israeli military called on residents to immediately evacuate places where it claimed the Hezbollah militant group stores weapons.

Thousands of people fled southern Lebanon, jamming the main highway to Beirut in the biggest exodus since the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war. More than 1,645 people were wounded in the strikes, the Health Ministry said, a staggering one-day toll for the country.

The Israeli military said it hit more than 1,600 targets on Monday (September 23) linked to Hezbollah weapons sites. It said it was expanding the operation to include areas of the Bekaa Valley, along Lebanon’s eastern border.

Residents of different villages in southern Lebanon posted photos on social media that they said showed their towns that were being struck.

The wave of airstrikes came after a day after Hezbollah fired over 100 rockets into northern Israel, with some landing near the city of Haifa.

Hezbollah’s rockets were in response to an Israeli airstrike on a Beirut suburb on Friday (September 20, 2024) that killed a top Hezbollah military commander and more than a dozen members, along with civilians including women and children.

Last week, thousands of communications devices, used mainly by Hezbollah members, exploded in different parts of Lebanon, killing 39 people and wounding nearly 3,000. Lebanon blamed the attacks on Israel, but Israel did not confirm or deny its responsibility. — AP

Beirut:

Eight people have died and more than 2,750 injured, many grievously so, in Lebanon in a synchronised detonation of pagers targeting US-designated terror group Hezbollah. Iran’s state media reported that its Ambassador to Lebanon, Mojtaba Amani, has also been wounded in the incident. The explosions happened at around 3:30 pm local time in Lebanon (6 pm IST).

Lebanese Health Minister Firass Abiad confirmed that eight people were killed and some 2,750 wounded in the incident.

The minister, in a televised press conference, said the blasts “killed eight people, including a girl”, adding that “About 2,750 people were injured and more than 200 of them critically”. The injuries were mostly on the face, hands and stomach, he further said.

An independent war monitor has said that fourteen people have also been injured in pager blasts in Syria, reported news agency AFP.

Hezbollah, which is banned both by the United States and the European Union is the political and military establishment in Lebanon and is backed by Iran. Hezbollah backs Hamas, which has been at war with Israel in Gaza since October 2023.

According to a report by Saudi news channel Al Hadath, the pager attacks have killed a son of Ali Ammar, the Hezbollah representative in the Lebanese Parliament.

While some reports claim that the explosions were caused due to the overheating of lithium batteries caused by an electronic signal breach (quite like a cyber attack – pagers using electronic), some other reports allege that a thin lining of explosives were placed inside the pagers before being supplied. NDTV cannot independently verify either of these claims at the moment.

Hezbollah has blamed Israel for the attack and has claimed that this is the “biggest security breach” it has faced yet. All the pagers exploded nearly the same time, the Hezbollah has claimed, saying that this is an “Israeli breach” of its communications network.

Hezbollah strongholds across Lebanon have been hit by the “Israeli breach”. This is the first such major incident since the group began trading fire with Israel almost every day in its support for Hamas which is at war with Israel in Gaza since the October 7 “terror attack” targeting Israeli nationals.

The explosions happened outside Lebanon too, as four people were injured in Syria as at least one pager blew up in a vehicle in Damascus.

“Dozens of Hezbollah members have been wounded in the south and in Beirut’s southern suburbs after their pagers exploded,” a source close to Hezbollah told news agency AFP, requesting anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

Lebanon’s official National News Agency called it “an unprecedented enemy security incident” with “handheld pagers detonating” at nearly the same time across Lebanon.

According to AFP, Hezbollah communicates through its own telecommunications system and has asked its members to avoid using mobile phones since the Gaza war began almost a year ago. The diktat was issued to avoid Israeli breaches of the technology.

HEZBOLLAH BLAMES ISRAEL IN STATEMENT

Hezbollah put out a statement shortly after the pager explosions saying that at “Around 3:30 pm (local time) on Tuesday, several pager devices used by Hezbollah members and officials of various institutions exploded.”

“Israel is fully responsible for the pager blasts,” Hezbollah said.

The statement further read, “A girl and her two brothers” were killed in the incident, while many others were injured.

“The relevant authorities in Hezbollah are currently conducting extensive security and scientific investigations to find the reasons for these simultaneous explosions,” it added.

The statement urged people to be “cautious of rumors and misinformation spread by certain parties, as this may serve the psychological warfare” by Israel.

Israel has not yet responded to these claims made by Hezbollah or Iran.

WHAT IS A PAGER? HOW DOES IT WORK?

A pager is an electronic telecommunications device which were mostly used in the 1990s and early 2000s to send text and alpha-numeric messages.

Pagers, also known as beepers or bleepers, is a wireless device that receives and displays alphanumeric and in some cases, voice messages.

There are various types of pagers – A one-way pager can only receive messages, while a two-way or ‘response’ pagers can also respond. The response also is an alpha-numeric text which acknowledges or replies to the original message using an internal transmitter.

Two-way pagers, also known as response pagers typically work using ReFLEX protocol, which was developed in the mid-1990s. FLEX provides one-way communication only (from the provider to the pager device), but a related protocol called ReFLEX provides two-way messaging.

Modern paging systems typically use multiple base transmitters to modulate the same signal on the same RF channel, a design approach called simulcast.

Data transmitted over FLEX and ReFLEX is not encrypted and is hence vulnerable to breaches. There are codes used to improve the integrity of the data, but these are not cryptographically secure.

What encryption methods were being used by the Hezbollah is not known.