The devices were brought into Lebanon about five months ago – a retired Lebanese army brigadier said they were planted with highly sophisticated explosives “during the construction phase or at other stages”
The simultaneous bombing of nearly 5,000 Hezbollah members yesterday in Lebanon and Syria, an action attributed, according to international media, to a joint operation by the IDF and the Mossad, is reminiscent of a spy thriller case.
According to the Taiwanese company Gold Apollo, the AP-924 bombards purchased by Hezbollah were manufactured by Budapest-based BAC Consulting KFT.
CEO of Gold Apollo, Hsu Ching-Kuang denied manufacturing the explosive pager. When asked abt AR-924, he said “it is produced & sold by BAC…we only provide brand trademark authorization & have no involvement in design or manufacturing of this product.” See my exchange with him. pic.twitter.com/eb6k65oyKl
— Tingting Liu 劉äºå»· (@tingtingliuTVBS) September 18, 2024
A senior Lebanese security source told Reuters the bombers were brought into the country about five months ago, well before yesterday’s blast.
A senior Taiwanese security official told CNN that Gold Apollo has shipped about 260,000 buzzers from Taiwan, mostly to the United States and Australia. However, there is no record of the devices being shipped to Lebanon or the Middle East.
Where and when the buzzers were trapped with explosives
Multiple reports in the international media indicate that Israel’s Mossad spy agency, in collaboration with the country’s Armed Forces, the IDF, is behind the booby trap.
The burning question now is where and when—at what stage from production to detonation—were the buzzers trapped.
According to them New York Timesthe whistleblowers were caught by the Mossad before reaching Lebanon. Israeli intelligence was able to infiltrate Hezbollah’s supply chain and plan the energy, from its production in Budapest to its importation into Lebanon.
Up to 57 grams of explosives and detonators were placed alongside the buzzers’ lithium battery, which has an 85-day life.
The devices detonated just seconds after a message that appeared to be sent by Hezbollah leadership.
The video from the moment a buzzer explodes in the hands of a man at the supermarket checkout is typical. The message rings, the man takes the buzzer out of his pocket to look at it, and the device explodes.
Exploding pagers and other communication devices in #Lebanon among #Hezbollah members today. Recall the public reporting that #Israel has infiltrated the Hezbollah communication networks and that Hezbollah had switched to pagers and couriers after cell phones were banned. pic.twitter.com/AGGVYhE2lC
— Jason Brodsky (@JasonMBrodsky) September 17, 2024
A retired Lebanese army brigadier general and former government coordinator with the UN peacekeeping mission UNIFIL said the devices “were laced with several grams of hard-to-detect explosives and placed in the battery in a way that ensured they could not be detected by sensors or by any explosive detection tools’.
According to Munir Sehada in Anadolu, the type of explosives has not yet been confirmed, but it is “sophisticated explosivesmade of modern materials that cannot be detected by sensors’.
Regarding the place or country where the devices were trapped, Sehanda said “it’s too early to discuss that” but they could have been trapped “during the manufacturing phase or at other stages.”
They were detonated earlier than expected
Israeli and US sources told Axios and Al-Monitor that the blasts of the sirens were initially planned as “the first move in an ‘all-out’ attack” against Hezbollah.
However, in recent days, Israel became concerned that Hezbollah had caught wind of the plan and so detonated the explosives in the buzzers earlier than originally planned.
Source :Skai
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