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Ask not for whom the pager tolls. It tolls for thee, Hezbollah.
Yesterday, Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant warned the US that time had all but run out on a diplomatic solution to the conflict with Hezbollah. Today, the Israelis alerted dozens hundreds of Hezbollah members in Beirut, too. The Israelis had apparently rigged their pagers with explosives, and set them off earlier this morning:
Dozens of members of the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah were seriously wounded on Tuesday in Lebanon’s south and the southern suburbs of Beirut when the pagers they use to communicate exploded, security sources told Reuters.
A Reuters journalist saw 10 Hezbollah members bleeding from wounds in the southern suburb of Beirut known as Dahiyeh.
« Dozens » was the initial report, but the full scope of this operation is already looking larger. Now it’s being reported as « hundreds », and one report puts the number at 1200. At least one video of the explosions has emerged too:
BREAKING via Reuters
“Hundreds of members of the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah, including fighters and medics, were seriously wounded on Tuesday when the pagers they use to communicate exploded.”
Here is one video of one of the pager explosions. pic.twitter.com/GIv39T26Ki— Yashar Ali ???? (@yashar) September 17, 2024
That’s ingenious. It’s enough to wound and potentially kill a specific enemy target while doing no collateral damage. One has to wonder how the Israelis pulled this off. You can bet that Hezbollah will spend a lot of time trying to find that out . at least those who didn’t get paged this morning.
One thing is for sure — Hezbollah not only lost many key personnel for a while (even if they all survive), but they also now have to rethink their internal communications. The use of older-tech pagers may have been an attempt to get around Israeli surveillance and protect communications with higher-ranking terrorists.
