“It was clearly a premeditated IED attack,” said Jerry Back, a fire investigator and senior engineer at Jensen Hughes. “The fact that multiple explosions occurred simultaneously suggests that small explosive devices were incorporated into the equipment, meaning that the manufacturing process was tampered with.”

pagers left mangled sabotage beirut 89861478_0306c6.jpg
The production chain is believed to have been tampered with to attach explosives to pager batteries. Photo: NYT

The affected pagers were part of a new batch recently delivered to Hezbollah. Some witnesses said they noticed the devices heating up before they exploded.

An anonymous source told Sky News Arabia that Mossad (Israeli intelligence) intercepted the communications equipment, stuffed the powerful plastic explosive Pentaerythritol Tetranitrate (PETN) commonly used for military purposes into the devices and destroyed them before the shipment reached the enemy.

“The explosive PETN is attached to the battery and detonated by increasing the temperature,” the source said.

Jon Alterman, director of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic Studies, confirmed that Sky News Arabia 's information was correct. "It appears that the equipment supply chain has been compromised."

The explosions in Lebanon and Syria are reminiscent of the improvised explosive devices (IEDs) used by militants and terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“Basically, the mobile phones turn into explosive devices after being attached to other explosives, such as C4,” Back said. “The militants often place the phones along the road, and when a military convoy passes by, they will call and detonate them.”

It is still unclear what exact mechanism triggered the pagers to overheat and explode, while the chance of a lithium battery spontaneously exploding is only about one in ten million.

(According to NYT, Bloomberg)

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