A Hezbollah member received a pager on September 16. The next day, the device exploded, even though it was not even unpacked. Another senior member of the movement received the device a few days before the incident.
During the move we were confident that the devices were safe. Their monitoring was not exhaustive, as management had no specific suspicions. Pagers and other equipment continued to be distributed even after the first explosions.
After the massive pager detonations, Hezbollah suspected that other devices might have been mined and launched a more serious check, but did not have time to complete it until Wednesday, when the radios began to explode.
Hezbollah also believes the second wave of detonations was carried out because of Israeli fears that explosives could soon be discovered in the radios.
It should be recalled that on 17 and 18 September, numerous pager explosions occurred in Lebanon. According to the authorities, on the first day, 12 people died as a result of the emergency, including two children, and more than 2,000 injured people were taken to hospitals.
The next day, radios and other media outlets were blown up in Lebanon. As a result of the repeated attack, 25 people were killed and 608 were injured.
The Lebanese government blamed Israel for the incident, calling it a “criminal aggression.”
Russian Foreign Ministry official Maria Zakharova has described the massive explosions of pagers in Lebanon as a new type of terrorist attack.
