A coordinated explosion of thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies in Lebanon and Syria claimed several lives and left nearly 4,000 injured, sparking widespread concern, particularly on social media, over the safety of smartphones.
The attack which primarily targeted the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah saw the small devices go off across Lebanon and Syria, wounding thousands of people.
Thousands of devices explode across Lebanon
At least 20 people were killed and more than 450 were wounded after dozens of walkie-talkies blew up in Lebanon on Wednesday, a day after a wave of pager explosions across Lebanon targeting the militant group killed nine people and wounded nearly 4,000 others.
The blasts mainly targeted the pagers of Hezbollah members. Hezbollah said 16 members were killed, but it didn’t elaborate on the circumstances.
The first explosions occurred in Beirut and southern Lebanon, causing widespread chaos. Lebanon’s Health Minister, Firas Abiad, 12 people, said including two children, lost their lives, while 2,800 others were injured, 300 of them critically.
The attack was timed to coincide with the activation of communication pagers used by Hezbollah members, which rang before detonating. Early reports suggested that the devices were rigged to explode remotely, harming those nearby.
What are pagers?
Pagers are wireless devices that receive and display alphanumeric messages, transmitted via radio waves. They operate within a system of fixed transmitters broadcasting signals over specific frequencies.
While one-way pagers only receive messages, two-way pagers allow users to acknowledge and respond. Though their use has declined since the 1990s, pagers remain in service among emergency responders and public safety personnel.
Israel planted explosives inside Taiwan-made beepers, officials say
Israel carried out its operation against Hezbollah by hiding explosive material within a new batch of Taiwanese-made pagers imported into Lebanon, according to American and other officials briefed on the operation.
The pagers, which Hezbollah had ordered from Gold Apollo in Taiwan, had been tampered with before they reached Lebanon, according to some officials. Most were the company’s AR924 model.
Taiwanese company Gold Apollo said that it authorized its brand on the AR-924 pagers used by the Hezbollah militant group, but the devices were produced and sold by a Budapest-registered BAC Consulting. Gold Apollo founder and chairperson Hsu Ching-kuang told the media that his firm had signed a contract with a European distributor to use the Gold Apollo brand.
Hungarian authorities denied Gold Apollo’s suggestion, saying that BAC Consulting “is a trading intermediary” with no manufacturing sites in the country.
Taiwan’s Economic Affairs Ministry said that Gold Apollo had exported 260,000 pagers from 2022 to August 2024, primarily to European and American markets.
What could have caused the explosion?
The exact method behind the attacks is still under investigation. Security sources have suggested that small explosives were concealed within the pagers and detonated remotely through the devices’ own communication systems.
Israeli intelligence is suspected of planting these booby-trapped devices, which were possibly chosen due to their difficulty in being tracked compared to smartphones. However, the specific modification techniques remain unclear, leaving room for speculation on the safety of consumer electronics.
How could the pagers have been tampered with?
Lebanese digital rights NGO SMEX published an analysis suggesting several ways the devices may have been compromised. The pagers could have been tampered with during transport, set to detonate via radio signal or on a timer. Some experts speculated that overheating the batteries might have triggered the explosion, though this theory has been largely dismissed.
Paul Amoroso, a counter-improvised explosive device advisor, explained that such a synchronized attack would require sophisticated planning. The ability to miniaturize explosives to fit inside a pager, he explained, requires “very few types of explosives” and an “effective initiator,” likely developed through state-level engineering.
“There is a key characteristic you would need from the energetic material, the explosives, if it was an explosive, it’s called critical diametre and that’s how small you can make the explosives, and there are only very few types of explosives that have that characteristic,” he told Euronews Next.
A senior Lebanese security source later, on September 18, confirmed that Israel’s spy agency had indeed placed explosives inside thousands of pagers, importing them into Lebanon months before the attack.
Are your smartphones safe from similar attacks?
Following the explosion, social media was flooded with concerns that smartphones could be the next target. “If pagers can be hacked to explode, cell phones will be next,” one user commented. However, experts reassured the public that the average person is unlikely to be at risk.
Daniel Card, a fellow of the BCS Chartered Institute for IT, explained, “The average person doesn’t need to worry about potential risks like plastic explosives from a supply chain attack aimed at a specific group of people.”
He emphasized that mobile phones and other electronic devices are generally very safe.
Dr. Lukasz Olejnik from King’s College London also weighed in, noting that while smartphones could technically be targeted, they are far easier to track than pagers.
“There is no risk that someone explodes your smartphone,” he reassured, highlighting that modern phones are constructed to resist such tampering.