According to numerous media reports, it all began earlier this year, when Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah got tired of Israeli-directed assassinations that were using his lieutenants’ smartphones to locate and kill them. Nasrallah decided to go low-tech and banned at least partially the use of smartphones.
According to multiple officials, more than 3,000 pagers were procured from the Gold Apollo company based in Taiwan. Hezbollah subsequently distributed these pagers among its members across Lebanon, with a portion being sent to Hezbollah affiliates in Iran and Syria. The alleged Israeli assault impacted those pagers that were powered on and actively receiving communications.
A Gold Apollo spokeswoman announced early Wednesday: “Those devices aren’t ours, we didn’t manufacture the pagers.” She stated that Gold Apollo grants its brand license to at least one additional company, although she refrained from disclosing any specific names.
According to Reuters, Gold Apollo founder Hsu Ching-Kuang also told reporters that his company didn’t make the devices.
Gold Apollo later disclosed that a company called BAC Consulting KFT, based in Budapest, Hungary, was licensing the use of its brand, and produced the model that was used in the attack on Hezbollah operatives. “Regarding the AR-924 pager model mentioned in recent media reports, we clarify that this model is manufactured and sold by BAC,” the Taiwanese company stated.
Which then raises the question about who is this BAC corporation. Open Source Intel dug around a little bit and published their interesting findings in this tweet:
Additional information about the company that sold the beepers to Hezbollah
– According to the Hungarian company registry, it turns out that the Hungarian company **BAC Consulting KFT**, which manufactured the beepers for Hezbollah, was only established in 2022 and reached a… https://t.co/JkzEvh95Uh
— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) September 18, 2024
The Wall Street Journal reported that most of the impacted pagers originated from a recent shipment that Hezbollah acquired in the past few days.
Hezbollah reported that the pagers utilized by its members detonated simultaneously at 3:30 PM Lebanon time. The explosions occurred in various locations throughout the country where Hezbollah maintains a substantial presence. A representative from Hezbollah indicated that some individuals noticed the pagers becoming hot and discarded them before the explosions.
In fact, Al-Monitor reported that Hezbollah members’ suspicions of the booby-trapped pagers pushed up Israel’s alleged attack.
A cybercrime adviser to Europol told the NY Times “these pagers were likely modified in some way to cause these types of explosions — the size and strength of the explosion indicates it was not just the battery.”
According to the NY Times, citing US officials, each pager contained one to two ounces of explosive material concealed adjacent to the battery, accompanied by a switch capable of remotely activating the device.
According to Sky News in Arabic, “The material was attached to the batteries and after the radios were returned to Hezbollah, it was a matter of time and a decision by the Mossad. There was a takeover of the devices that caused the battery to heat up. The explosive substance blows up at a temperature of 190 degrees Celsius, which is considered a low temperature. And so, the lithium battery became the thunderbolt of the explosion.”
The early part of Tuesday was very tense in Israel. The Shin Bet issued a statement claiming it had foiled an assassination attempt by Hezbollah against a former senior military official inside Israel. The Shin Bet released a photo of a sophisticated explosive device it said Hezbollah planned to use, which it said it had captured.
Netanyahu informed US Envoy Amos Hochstein on Sunday that it was imperative for Israel to take measures to facilitate the return of displaced Israelis to their residences along the northern border, which they evacuated following Hezbollah’s initiation of attacks on Israel on October 8. Since then, there had been round-the-clock meetings of the security establishment. On Tuesday, in the few hours following the assassination announcement, Israeli media were rife with reports of the hectic meetings between Netanyahu’s foreign and security cabinet and the heads of the security establishment.
Clearly, a retaliation plan was being hatched, a reasonable assumption that had every Hezbollah member remain close to his beeper.
That was the idea.
The coordinated explosion of those “updated” Hezbollah pagers in Lebanon and Syria resulted in the deaths of nine individuals and left nearly 3,000 others injured. One per pager. And you said the IDF was not efficient.
