Article title updated
Iran’s Ambassador to Lebanon Loses One Eye, Seriously Damages Other in Pager Explosion, New York Times
Mojtaba Amani, according to the publication, is being evacuated to Iran for treatment. It is noted that before the explosion, the pagers emitted a beep, which prompted many to bring the devices to their faces.
The attack was probably carried out by Israeli intelligence services, which planted explosives in about 5,000 pagers, Reuters reports. Of these, about 3,000 exploded. A senior source in Lebanon told the agency that the devices were planted by the Israeli spy service “at the production level.” “The Mossad inserted a circuit board containing explosive material into the device, which receives a code. It is very difficult to detect by any means. Even with any device or scanner,” the source said.
The day before, 4,000 people were injured in Lebanon, 11 of whom were killed as a result of pager explosions. Reuters writes that hundreds of members of the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah, including fighters and medics, were seriously injured due to explosions of pagers, which they use for secret communication.
A second wave of explosions today
Do we know if those 2800+ injured are mostly militants, or mostly civilian?
Also, how many pagers are still out there with explosives in them?
Option 1: Israel blew up all the pagers containing explosives, regardless of whether they’d been sold / passed on to family members, friends, or other people who had no connection with Hezbollah, so many of the thousands of injured were innocent bystanders.
Option 2: Israel got the pagers into the hands of tens of thousands of people, then only blew up the ones that were actually in Hezbollah possession, leaving thousands of pagers out there containing explosives.
Knowing Israel, it’s almost certainly option 1.
these pagers were issued by hezbollah higher-ups, for one-way communication with their hq. there’s little reason for them to sell them or even lend to family because you can’t call from this thing or communicate with it any other way because it’s receive only. civilian casualties are probably low for this reason
Yes, it’s a pager. Pagers are still useful, that’s why they’re still being manufactured and sold. Someone in IT who’s on call can have a pager set up so that an automated process sends them a notification if a system breaks. They don’t need two-way communication for that. A doctor can use one to be notified if they’re needed at the hospital. It’s more reliable than a cell phone and in many cases the battery lasts a lot longer. They could even be useful for a parent to give to a kid, so that the parent can get in contact with the kid and have the kid call home if something happens. In rich countries that could happen because the parent doesn’t want the kid using the device all the time to scroll TikTok. In poorer countries it could happen because a pager is much, much cheaper than a phone.
The fact that thousands of these devices were exploded suggests that it was a pretty wide group of people who were using them, so the odds are pretty good that at least some of them were given away / sold.
Removed by mod
Probably don’t need to be calling names yeah?
not when dealing with bad faith posters, no