What We Know About the Pagers: Thousands of Hezbollah Operatives Hit Hard by High-Tech Strike

Scenes of carnage and desperation were prevalent across Lebanon Tuesday as ambulances carried thousands of victims of a deadly attack on Hezbollah operatives to hospitals. Thousands of pagers detonated after receiving a message, injuring nearly 3,000 people and killing at least 12, mostly members of Hezbollah.

The terror group blamed Israel and promised revenge, but the Israelis have not claimed credit and the U.S. says it had no prior knowledge of the attack.

The pagers were reportedly manufactured in Hungary and purchased by Hezbollah after leadership ordered members not to use their cell phones for fear they would be tracked by Israeli intelligence.

Retired U.S. Marine Col. Steve Ganyard speculated how the operation might have been carried out.

"The Israelis likely saw an opportunity, bought up thousands of pagers, took them apart, inserted explosives, and then put them back on the market to sell directly to Hezbollah. And then, using the radio frequencies that normally bring data into that pager, they simultaneously detonated all of the pagers," Ganyard told ABC News. 

The devices exploded in Beirut, eastern Lebanon and parts of Syria at around 3:30 in the afternoon and the streets were soon flooded with the sound of blaring sirens from ambulances.

The action is a severe blow to the Hezbollah terror group, disrupting its communications and taking thousands of operatives out of action. 

A Taiwanese company owns the brand for the pagers that were used in the attack, but it says a separate company based in Budapest had a license to manufacture them and use the brand. 

The AR-924 pager, advertised as being “rugged,” contains a rechargeable lithium battery. It could receive text messages of up to 100 characters and claimed to have up to 85 days of battery life. Pagers run on a different wireless network than mobile phones making them more reliable and hard to track.

Hezbollah has been relentlessly striking Israel since Hamas’ Oct. 7 atrocities, forcing more than 60,000 Israelis to flee their homes for nearly a year as rockets constantly rain down on the northern part of the country.

The anti-Israel, anti-American Iranian regime is the chief sponsor of the Hezbollah terrorist group. The Iranian Ambassador to Lebanon was in the direct vicinity of a Hezbollah pager since he was among the wounded in Tuesday's attack.

Full-Scale War with Hezbollah?

Meanwhile, the Israeli Defense Forces are ramping up their presence near the Lebanon border for a potential military action.

Israel has been moving more troops to the northern border with Lebanon in recent days. 

In The Jerusalem Post, analyst Yonah Jeremy Bob writes that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had concerned about the potential casualties from a war against the terror group if it launched six to eight thousand rockets a day against Israel.

But then on August 25th, "The Israeli military blew up the vast majority of the rockets and drones with which Hezbollah had intended to attack Israel before these threats could even be launched..."

"Suddenly, Netanyahu has a newfound confidence: that he actually can afford a major operation against Hezbollah – with much fewer losses to the home front than he had expected," Bob writes.

He adds, "Sources have told the Post that if more than four to six weeks pass without an operation, it may be impossible – or much harder – to carry out such an operation until spring 2025."

That would mean leaving those 60,000 displaced Israelis away from their homes in the north for another six months or so, and that's increasingly difficult politically in Israel.

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