Hezbollah Paid for the Bombs in Its Pockets

Hezbollah’s new pagers were still being issued when the trap was about to close. Reuters reported on September 20, 2024 that members received devices hours before the coordinated explosions across Lebanon. One source described a pager delivered on Monday that blew up on Tuesday while still inside its box.

The procurement trail carried a second deception. An October Reuters investigation traced fabricated shops, product pages and online endorsements that helped give the weaponized equipment a commercial identity. Two Western security sources identified Mossad as the agency leading the operation. A buyer checking the product’s backstory could encounter material created as part of the trap.

Hezbollah had turned to pagers to reduce exposure to Israeli tracking of mobile phones. According to Reuters’s September reporting, the group examined imported equipment for security threats, including by taking devices through airports. Those checks failed to expose the compromised pagers. After the first explosions, another investigation of communications equipment began.

It was still unfinished when handheld radios exploded on September 18, the day after the pager attack, Reuters reported. The group’s effort to secure its communications had left it distributing devices that an adversary could detonate.

Israel’s responsibility subsequently became public. On November 11, 2024, Netanyahu’s spokesman Omer Dostri told Reuters that the prime minister had approved the pager attacks. The confirmation replaced the initial official silence with an acknowledgment from the head of government’s office.

The victims extended beyond fighters. Reuters’s September 2025 follow-up reported 39 people killed and more than 3,400 wounded across the two attacks, including children and other civilians. Survivors described repeated surgery and lasting damage to their sight and hands.

UN human rights chief Volker Türk had called for an independent investigation immediately after the pager explosions. In his September 18 statement, he said targeting thousands of people without knowing who possessed the devices or where they were violated human rights law and, where applicable, humanitarian law. That was the high commissioner’s legal assessment; the operational ingenuity did not settle the question of civilian protection.