Pagers issued to Hezbollah members exploded almost simultaneously across Lebanon on Wednesday, killing at least nine people, wounding almost 3,000—and leaving plenty of questions about how the unprecedented attack was carried out. Some suspected that malware could have caused batteries in the devices to overheat, but the New York Times, citing "American and other officials briefed on the operation," reports that Israel concealed explosives in a batch of pagers imported to Lebanon from Taiwan. The sources say one to two ounces of explosives were inserted next to the battery before the devices reached Lebanon, along with a switch that could detonate the explosives remotely.
The Times' sources say the explosives were triggered by a message that appeared to come from Hezbollah leadership. The militant group vowed to get "just retribution" for what it called "criminal aggression." Israel has not claimed responsibility for the attack.
- Pagers may have been procured months ago. Political risk analyst Elijah J. Magnier tells the AP that survivors of the attack told him the pagers had been procured months ago. "The pagers functioned perfectly for six months," he says. The AP notes that Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah had told members to switch to pagers from cell phones, saying Israel could use phones to track them.
- "The most dangerous moment." "Israel in one fell swoop has rendered combat ineffective hundreds if not thousands of Hezbollah fighters, in some cases permanently," Nicholas Blanford, a Beirut-based senior fellow of the Atlantic Council think tank, tells the BBC. He says Hezbollah's leaders "face extreme pressure from the ranks and supporters to retaliate heavily," making this "the most dangerous moment" since the Hezbollah-Israel conflict heated up last October.
- "A wider fight." If Israel was indeed behind the attack, "then the question is whether this vast and unprecedented assault was intended to presage a wider fight," says Nick Paton-Walsh at CNN. "It would make strategic sense to dispense a moment of intense chaos like this just before a bigger onslaught on the group militarily." He notes that on Monday, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said the time for diplomacy with Hezbollah had passed.
- "Bedlam" at hospitals. The Washington Post reports that there was "bedlam" at hospitals in Lebanon in the aftermath of the attack, with victims including seriously injured children and elderly people. At least one child was killed. "Some scenes are horrific," a staff member at Beirut's LAU Medical Center tells the BBC. He says most of the wounds were to people's waists, hands, or faces, particularly the eyes. "A lot of casualties have lost fingers, in some cases all of them," he says.
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