Dozens injured as Hezbollah pagers simultaneously explode - reports - i24NEWS
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According to reports, at least 10 Hezbollah operatives were injured after the hand-held communications devices they held blew up in Dahieh, Beirut • Similiar incidents reported throughout country

Warning: Graphic images

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Iran’s Ambassador to Lebanon Loses One Eye, Seriously Damages Other in Pager Explosion, New York Times

Mojtaba Amani, according to the publication, is being evacuated to Iran for treatment. It is noted that before the explosion, the pagers emitted a beep, which prompted many to bring the devices to their faces.

The attack was probably carried out by Israeli intelligence services, which planted explosives in about 5,000 pagers, Reuters reports. Of these, about 3,000 exploded. A senior source in Lebanon told the agency that the devices were planted by the Israeli spy service “at the production level.” “The Mossad inserted a circuit board containing explosive material into the device, which receives a code. It is very difficult to detect by any means. Even with any device or scanner,” the source said.

The day before, 4,000 people were injured in Lebanon, 11 of whom were killed as a result of pager explosions. Reuters writes that hundreds of members of the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah, including fighters and medics, were seriously injured due to explosions of pagers, which they use for secret communication.

https://t.me/astrapress/64588

A second wave of explosions today

  • tal@lemmy.todayEnglish
    222·
    2 days ago

    I’m kind of guessing, from the strength of the explosion in the video – it really was a small explosion, not bursting into flames – that somehow rigged pagers were inserted into Hezbollah’s equipment prior to distribution to operatives.

    But if this was, instead, some kind of remote software compromise of battery management system firmware for lithium batteries, now I have one more thing to worry about in my life, with all the devices with lithium batteries I have.

    looks warily at laptop on my chest

    EDIT: Strengthening my concerns, in the CNN article I linked to in my other comment, the devices were termed “hacked” by Lebanese internal security forces. Now, okay, that’s a report immediately after the event, and I don’t know how much time they have had to actually do analysis. Or if they’re right. But:

    NNA reported that “hacked” pager devices exploded in the towns of Ali Al-Nahri and Riyaq in Lebanon’s central Beqaa valley, resulting in a significant number of injuries. The locations are Hezbollah strongholds.

    …it sure doesn’t assuage my concerns at all. Even if you couldn’t make a BMS discharge lithium batteries hard enough to explode, you definitely can make them do so hard enough to make a pretty unpleasant fire. You do that with numerous laptop-sized devices all over a country, that’d potentially be a pretty unpleasant event.

    sighs

    Maybe it’s possible to mandate that lithium-ion devices conforming to some sort of safety certification standard, like UL or something, have non-updatable-firmware hardware putting a physical limit on discharge rate. I don’t think that that’d add too much cost or too many restrictions to devices.

    EDIT2: From this YouTube video, it sounds like as long as you’re not using sketchy battery cells in the device you’re building, that battery manufacturers already take this into consideration via a blowout hole:

    Even in the event of a short circuit, genuine lithium-ion batteries have several protective measures to prevent them from catching on fire. Take a look at this lithium-ion that was just shorted out. In the unlikely case that a battery short-circuits, the terminals heat up and the electrolyte fluid begins to boil. The vent holes in the top of the terminal allow the battery to depressurize the electrolyte steam, thereby reducing the battery capacity and making a pressure explosion much less likely. In the end, you’re more-likely to see a small fire shoot out of a battery than a large explosion. While they still can cause damage, it’s a much better option than having a battery explode, which results in a shrapnel cloud. But in counterfeit batteries, this vent hole safety valve is often ineffective.

    All that being said, I wouldn’t be surprised if I have some devices with sketchy cells…but my guess is that at least in my collection, when it comes to large-battery-capacity, Internet-connected devices capable of firmware updates, stuff like laptops, they’re probably – hopefully – using legit battery cells.

    • skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      12·
      2 days ago

      Israeli secret services used exploding phone previously, it’s not a stretch to assume that they tapped into supply chain of pagers and brought a pallet of pagers with a low tens of grams sized bomb inside

      also lithium batteries don’t explode like that

    • floofloof@lemmy.caEnglish
      7·
      2 days ago

      I wonder whether they exploded exactly at the same time. If so, it seems less likely it would have been an attack via the batteries since you wouldn’t expect them all to heat up and explode at the exact same rate.

    • skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      4·
      2 days ago

      secretive agency does secretive agency shit

      tal: how can i make this to be about mee?

      don’t put plastic explosives in electronics of your choice that’d be pretty safe i guess

    • merc@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      177·
      2 days ago

      Also, how many pagers are still out there with explosives in them?

      Option 1: Israel blew up all the pagers containing explosives, regardless of whether they’d been sold / passed on to family members, friends, or other people who had no connection with Hezbollah, so many of the thousands of injured were innocent bystanders.

      Option 2: Israel got the pagers into the hands of tens of thousands of people, then only blew up the ones that were actually in Hezbollah possession, leaving thousands of pagers out there containing explosives.

      Knowing Israel, it’s almost certainly option 1.

      • skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
        133·
        2 days ago

        these pagers were issued by hezbollah higher-ups, for one-way communication with their hq. there’s little reason for them to sell them or even lend to family because you can’t call from this thing or communicate with it any other way because it’s receive only. civilian casualties are probably low for this reason

        • merc@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          25·
          2 days ago

          because you can’t call from this thing or communicate with it any other way because it’s receive only

          Yes, it’s a pager. Pagers are still useful, that’s why they’re still being manufactured and sold. Someone in IT who’s on call can have a pager set up so that an automated process sends them a notification if a system breaks. They don’t need two-way communication for that. A doctor can use one to be notified if they’re needed at the hospital. It’s more reliable than a cell phone and in many cases the battery lasts a lot longer. They could even be useful for a parent to give to a kid, so that the parent can get in contact with the kid and have the kid call home if something happens. In rich countries that could happen because the parent doesn’t want the kid using the device all the time to scroll TikTok. In poorer countries it could happen because a pager is much, much cheaper than a phone.

          The fact that thousands of these devices were exploded suggests that it was a pretty wide group of people who were using them, so the odds are pretty good that at least some of them were given away / sold.

  • Nurse_Robot@lemmy.worldEnglish
    46·
    2 days ago

    Warning: graphic images

    My guy a table is not a graphic image

    Edit: I didn’t realize there were multiple images