Explained: How Israel carried out the pager attacks against Hezbollah

The inside story of the explosion of the pagers of Hezbollah agents last month reportedly reveals that it was a years-long operation that included the design of the pager bomb and a carefully-constructed cover story to make up for an Achilles’ heal in the operation.

Those who built the pagers designed a battery that concealed a small but powerful charge of plastic explosive and a unique detonator that was invisible to X-ray, according to a Lebanese source quoted by Reuters who had first-hand knowledge of the pagers and photos of the battery pack.

The explosive in the pager

A thin sheet with six grams of white pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN) plastic explosive was inserted between two battery cells. The remaining space between the battery cells was filled by a strip of highly flammable material that acted as the detonator.

This was inserted in a black plastic sieve and then placed in a metal casing about the size of a match box, says the Reuters report.

Also Read: 9 killed, over 2,000 injured as Hezbollah pagers explode across Lebanon

The assembly was different from the usual miniaturised detonators which used metallic cylinders. Since it did not have any metallic component, the material used to trigger the detonation was not detected by X-ray.

Hezbollah checked for explosives

The militant group, upon receiving the pagers in February, reportedly checked for the presence of explosives. They put them through airport security scanners to see if they triggered alarms. The alarms did not go off.

Bomb experts consulted by Reuters said the devices were probably set up to generate a spark within the battery pack sufficient enough to light the detonating material and trigger the sheet of PETN to explode.

Batteries had less power

Since the explosives and the wrapping took up about a third of the volume of the battery pack, it carried much less power than a pack with a 35-gram weight should have.

The Lebanese source said Hezbollah, after using the pagers for some time, did notice that the battery was draining faster than expected. But it did not set off any alarm bells in the group, and they continued to hand out the pagers to their agents even hours before the explosions took place.

The cover story

There were a couple of problems, however.

The pager was bulkier than the usual ones.

And the battery, LI-BT783, though it looked like a standard lithium-ion battery pack used in any number of consumer electronic goods, did not exist in the market.

A former Israeli intelligence officer said that Hezbollah has stringent procurement procedures to check what they purchase.

Also Read: Explained: How were Hezbollah pager blasts done? Why is Israel being suspected?

So the Israeli agents came up with a cover story to overcome these weaknesses, reported Reuters. They created fake online stores and pages and posts online that could withstand an investigation by Hezbollah before the decision to buy the products.

They deceived Hezbollah by selling the custom-created battery model, AR-924, under a famous Taiwanese brand, Gold Apollo.

The day after the explosions, the chairman of Gold Apollo Hsu Ching-kuang told reporters that he had been approached three years earlier by a former employee, Teresa Wu, and her “big boss, called Tom”, to discuss a licence agreement.

Hsu granted them the right to design their own products and market them under the Gold Apollo brand.

He added photos and a description of the pager on his company’s website, thus giving it credibility and visibility. The product could not, however, be bought directly from the website.

Hsu described his company as a victim of the plot.

The deception

Web pages and images of AR-924 were featured on the website apollosystemshk.com in September 2023. The website said it had a licence to distribute Gold Apollo products.

The website had an address in Hong Kong for a company called Apollo Systems HK.

However, neither is there a company by that name at that address nor in Hong Kong corporate records.

Also Read: Lebanon pager blasts: Why Hezbollah uses pagers in the age of smartphones?

One section of the website laid emphasis on the LI-BT783 battery’s outstanding performance, and said that unlike disposable batteries used in older generation pagers, it had 85 days of autonomy and could be charged with a USB cable.

There was also a 90-second promotional video on YouTube.

Two online stores were created that listed LI-BT783 in their catalogues. And in two online forums that were devoted to batteries, participants praised the performance of LI-BT783.

After the explosions, the website has disappeared from the internet.

How Hezbollah was duped into buying the pagers

Hezbollah’s internal investigations after the explosions have given them an idea of how the group was duped into buying the pagers.

The group had shifted to pagers at the beginning of this year after realizing that communication through mobile phones was being compromised by Israeli eavesdropping.

Also Read: 20 dead, 450 injured after walkie-talkies explode in Lebanon's Hezbollah strongholds

Their procurement manager was subjected to an aggressive sales tactic by the Israeli agents acting as sales executives for the pagers. They gave a very attractive offer, and kept dropping the price until the procurement person decided to go ahead with the purchase.