(Sky News) Israel’s Mossad spy agency planted a small amount of explosives inside thousands of pagers ordered by Hezbollah months before the devices exploded, a Lebanese security source has told the Reuters news agency.
The senior source said the militant group had ordered 5,000 beepers which several other sources said were brought into Lebanon in the spring.
The same source claimed that the devices had been modified by Israel’s spy service “at the production level”.
A second security source told Reuters that up to three grammes of explosives were hidden in the new pagers that went “undetected” by Hezbollah for months.
Images of the destroyed devices analysed by Reuters showed a format and stickers that were consistent with the AR-924 model of pagers with Gold Apollo branding – a Taiwan-based company.
The firm’s founder, Hsu Ching-Kuang, said the devices were actually made under licence in Europe by a firm called BAC, using the Gold Apollo name.
In a statement given to Sky News in Taiwan, the company said: “Apollo Gold Corporation has established a long-term private label authorisation and regional agency cooperation with BAC.
Apollo Gold declined to give further details of the European firm.
The model, like other pagers, wirelessly receives and display text messages but cannot make telephone calls.
Nine people were killed and thousands seriously injured in Tuesday’s explosions in different parts of Lebanon, the country’s health minister said.
Firas Abiad said 200 of the 2,750 wounded were in a critical condition.
Lebanese officials laid the blame on “Israeli aggression”, while Hezbollah promised to retaliate insisting Israel would receive “its fair punishment” for the blasts.
