September 17, 2024 - Hezbollah vows retaliation against Israel for deadly pager explosions

Our live coverage of the explosions targeting Hezbollah has moved here.

This picture shows Hsu Chin-Kuang, founder and chairman of Gold Apollo, at New Taipei City in Taiwan on September 18.

The pagers used to attack members of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah were made by a European distributor for manufacturer Gold Apollo, according to the Taiwanese company’s chairperson. 

Israel hid explosives inside a batch of pagers ordered from Gold Apollo and destined for Hezbollah, according to the New York Times.

Multiple images from Lebanon shared on social media appear to show damaged Gold Apollo pagers. CNN cannot geolocate the images but has verified they were published on Tuesday, the same day as the explosions. At least one pager shown in the images was a Gold Apollo AR924 model. 

Gold Apollo founder and chairperson Hsu Ching-kuang told reporters on Wednesday that his firm had signed a contract with a European distributor to use the Gold Apollo brand.   

Hsu said the distributor, which he later named as BAC in a company statement, established a relationship with Gold Apollo about three years ago.  

At first, the European company only imported Gold Apollo’s other pager and communication products, he said. Later, the company told Gold Apollo they wanted to make their own pagers and asked for the right to use the Taiwanese company’s brand, he said.   

Hsu said Gold Apollo had encountered at least one anomaly in its dealings with the distributor, citing a wire transfer that took a long time to clear. 

Taiwan has no record of Gold Apollo pagers being shipped to Lebanon or the Middle East, a senior Taiwanese security official told CNN on Wednesday. Gold Apollo shipped about 260,000 pagers from Taiwan, mostly to the United States and Australia, the official told CNN.

This post has been updated with more information.

Hundreds of pagers carried by Hezbollah members in Lebanon blew up nearly simultaneously on Tuesday in an unprecedented attack that surpasses a series of covert assassinations and cyber-attacks in the region over recent years in its scope and execution.

The Iran-backed militant group said the wireless devices began to explode around 3:30 p.m. local time in a targeted Israeli attack on Hezbollah operatives.

CNN learned that Israel was behind the attack, which was a joint operation between Israel’s intelligence service, the Mossad, and the Israeli military. The Lebanese government condemned the attack as “criminal Israeli aggression.”

Israel’s military, which has engaged in tit-for-tat strikes with Hezbollah since the start of the war with Iran-backed Palestinian militant group Hamas in Gaza last year, has refused to comment publicly on the explosions.

The pagers that exploded were new and had been purchased by Hezbollah in recent months, a Lebanese security source told CNN. The source did not provide any information on the exact date the pagers were bought or their model.

Experts say the explosions, unprecedented in their scale and nature, underscore Hezbollah’s vulnerability as its communication network was compromised to deadly effect.

How did the pagers explode? The New York Times reported Tuesday that Israel hid explosives inside a batch of pagers ordered from Taiwanese manufacturer Gold Apollo and destined for Hezbollah. A switch was embedded to detonate them remotely, it added.

What is the purpose of the attacks? At least part of the message to Hezbollah is clear: “We can reach you anywhere, anytime, at the day and moment of our choosing and we can do it at the press of a button,” according to CNN’s Chief Law Enforcement and Intelligence Analyst, John Miller.

Read more on what we know.

An image of a damaged pager circulating on social media. CNN could not geolocate the attached image taken from social media,but has verified that they were published on Tuesday, the same day as the explosions.

Photos that appear to show damaged Gold Apollo pagers have emerged on social media, alongside claims that they were damaged in Lebanon’s wave of pager explosions in on Tuesday.

CNN has reached out to the Taiwanese manufacturer for comment.

The New York Times reported Tuesday that Israel hid explosives inside a batch of pagers ordered from Gold Apollo and destined for Hezbollah. 

Most of the pagers were the company’s AP924 model but three other Gold Apollo models were included in the shipment, the Times reported.

CNN previously reported that the pagers had been purchased by Hezbollah in recent months, according to a Lebanese security source.

A person is carried on a stretcher outside American University of Beirut Medical Center as people, including Hezbollah fighters and medics, were wounded and killed when the pagers they use to communicate exploded across Lebanon, according to a security source, in Beirut, Lebanon on Tuesday, September 17.

Israel was behind the attack that caused thousands of pagers belonging to Hezbollah members to simultaneously explode in Lebanon on Tuesday, CNN has learned.

The operation, which left thousands injured across Lebanon, was the result of a joint operation between Israel’s intelligence service, the Mossad, and the Israeli military.

Israel placed explosive material in a batch of Taiwanese-made pagers which were imported into Lebanon and destined for Hezbollah, the New York Times reported, citing American and other officials briefed on the operation.

How it happened: The explosives were planted next to the battery in each pager, and a switch embedded to detonate them remotely, according to the New York Times. The devices detonated simultaneously after receiving a message on Tuesday afternoon, killing at least 9 people and injuring more than 2,800 — including at least 170 of whom were in critical condition, according to Lebanon’s Ministry of Health.

Hezbollah and the Lebanese government have blamed Israel for the attack. Israel has not commented.

Eyewitnesses have described to CNN how people lay injured in the streets of the Lebanese capital following the deadly pager explosions on Tuesday.  

One witness, who spoke to CNN outside the American University of Beirut Medical Center and asked not to be named citing fears for his safety, described going outside in a southern Beirut suburb after reading about the explosions online. 

Another witness, who also asked not to be named over fears for his safety, said he had been driving to work when he saw Red Cross ambulances and people lying on the ground. 

People gather outside American University of Beirut Medical Center in Beirut, Lebanon September 17.

Is it a prelude to a wider attack or the totality of the message to Hezbollah? This is the key question for the next 48 hours in the Middle East, as the Lebanese militant group comes to terms with the wholesale disruption and violation of their most sacred communications.

Tuesday’s wave of explosions in Lebanon will likely scar the Party, as they are often known, who pride themselves on secrecy, and the technological omerta their members adhere to. Yet it is their very bid to keep their secrets – using low-tech pagers and not more trackable smartphones – that appears to have led to several deaths and thousands of injuries.

It will have caused a seismic shock with Hezbollah members to now be asking not only if it is safe to contact their colleagues, but if those colleagues are unharmed?

Israel has characteristically not claimed responsibility, but if it was behind the attack as Lebanon and Hezbollah say, then the question is whether this vast and unprecedented assault was intended to presage a wider fight.

It would make strategic sense to dispense a moment of intense chaos like this just before a bigger onslaught on the group militarily.

The timing is telling. Just on Monday, the Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said during a meeting with the US envoy Amos Hochstein that the time for diplomacy with Hezbollah had passed and military might could take center stage. Literally hours later, their enemy’s entire communications infrastructure was hit with an attack that, according to a Lebanese security source, used pagers purchased by Hezbollah in “recent months,” necessitating a long lead time in the operation’s planning.

At the same time, the given wisdom that Israel does not want a war either is eroding.

Read more of the analysis.

People walk near an ambulance outside the American University of Beirut Medical Center as people, including Hezbollah fighters and medics, were wounded and killed when the pagers they use to communicate exploded across Lebanon, according to a security source, in Beirut, Lebanon on Tuesday, September 17.

At least nine people were killed and 2,800 wounded in an attack that targeted pagers held by members of Iran-backed Lebanese militant group Hezbollah across Lebanon on Tuesday, according to the country’s health minister. Iran’s ambassador to Beirut was one of those injured, according to Iranian state media.

Hezbollah has blamed Israel and vowed retribution while Lebanese officials urged citizens who possess pagers to discard them.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it will not be commenting. However, in its first statement since the explosions, the IDF said there were no changes in its advice to civilians.

The attacks have ratcheted up tension in the Middle East. Here’s what you need to know:

US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin spoke twice with his Israeli counterpart, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, on Tuesday, according to two US defense officials. The officials would not specify at exactly what time the two calls took place. 

Though Austin and Gallant are in regular contact, it’s uncommon to schedule two calls in one day and shows how seriously the US views the current situation. When Iran launched a barrage of ballistic missiles and drones at Israel on April 13, the two also spoke twice.

At a press briefing earlier Tuesday, Pentagon press secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said only that the two “spoke by phone today” without specifying how many times.

The exact cause of the pager explosions in Lebanon hasn’t been confirmed yet, and the news is developing by the minute. So far, experts who spoke to CNN said the explosions were most likely triggered by hardware tampering rather than another theory of a cybersecurity breach causing lithium batteries to heat up and explode – but neither has been confirmed by authorities.

Pagers are wireless devices that can send messages without an internet connection. Though they’ve lost popularity to cell phones, some fields like healthcare still depend on them.

Justin Cappos, a cybersecurity professor at NYU, said that it’s possible to cause damage to a variety of batteries – most commonly lithium batteries, which have caused dangerous fires. But he said it seems like the “devices were intentionally designed to explode when triggered, not a pager that everyone else in the world is using.”

“If you’re a normal person with a lithium-ion battery I would not be over-concerned about this,” Cappos said.

Baptiste Robert, a cybersecurity researcher and the CEO of Predicta Lab, said that rather than being hacked, the pagers were likely modified before shipping. He said the scale of the explosion seems to show it’s a coordinated and sophisticated attack.

When it comes to battery safety, the National Fire Protection Association has a set of safety guidelines for lithium batteries, such as properly disposing of them. The association also said people should stop using devices with lithium-ion batteries if the battery shows any sign of damage due to risk of fire or explosion.

It’s unclear what kind of battery the pagers in question had. A Lebanese security source told CNN that Hezbollah had recently purchased the devices.

CNN’s Christian Edwards, Adrienne Vogt and Aditi Sangal contributed to this report.

European airlines Air France and Lufthansa are suspending flights to Tel Aviv at least through Thursday “due to the security situation locally.” 

Air France is also suspending flights to Beirut through Thursday, amid fears of escalation in the region. 

The announcements come after exploding pagers in Lebanon killed at least nine people and injured thousands on Tuesday. 

The pager explosions in Lebanon “mark an extremely concerning escalation in what is an already unacceptably volatile context,” according to Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, the UN special coordinator for Lebanon.

In a statement from her office, she condemned the attack that Lebanon says killed nine and injured thousands of others.

She also urged “all concerned actors to refrain from any further action, or bellicose rhetoric, which could trigger a wider conflagration that nobody can afford.”

Hennis-Plasschaert also called for stability in the region to be prioritized.

“Too much is at stake to do anything less,” the statement said.

Hezbollah has long touted secrecy as a cornerstone of its military strategy, forgoing high-tech devices to avoid infiltration from Israeli and US spyware.

In a televised address over six months ago, Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah called on Hezbollah members and their families in southern Lebanon, where fighting with Israeli forces across the border has raged for nearly a year, to forgo their cell phones.

“The collaborator (with the Israelis) is the cell phone in your hands, and those of your wife and your children. This cell phone is the collaborator and the killer,” he went on to say in his fiery speech.

Unlike other non-state actors in the Middle East, Hezbollah units are believed to communicate through an internal communications network.

This is considered one of the key building blocks of the powerful group that has long been accused of operating as a state-within-a-state.

The pagers – for decades obsolete to most people in Lebanon – would have served to prompt Hezbollah members to contact one another through those phone lines.

In addition to causing a mass-casualty event across several parts of Lebanon, the apparent infiltration of those pagers, one step removed from their actual networks, will have rattled the Iran-backed group.

In its bid to escape Israel’s radar, its back-to-basics approach appears to have literally backfired in a way that they would have least expected.

Israel's opposition leader Yair Lapid delivers a statement to the press following his meeting with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken at the State Department in Washington, DC, on Monday, September 16.

Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid is returning to Israel from the US sooner than expected, following the pager explosions on Tuesday that Lebanon says killed nine people and injured around 2,800.  

His spokesperson Yair Zivan said Lapid was forced to change his plans due to the situation in the region.  

Lapid had traveled to the US on Sunday to discuss the negotiations over a ceasefire-for-hostages deal between Israel and Hamas. 

On Monday, Lapid met with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Washington. Following their meeting, he called on the Netanyahu government to do more to secure an agreement, adding that he would give the prime minister “any necessary safety net in order to make the deal.” 

Lapid also met former US President Barack Obama as well as US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan during his trip. 

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has blamed Israel for the deadly pager explosions in Lebanon, calling it “Israeli terrorism,” in a phone call with Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib on Tuesday. 

Araghchi posted to X offering condolences to the families of the victims and the injured, pledging to provide necessary medical assistance. 

According to Iranian state outlet Press TV, Araghchi specifically inquired about the condition of Iranian Ambassador Mojtaba Amani, who was injured in the explosions, and thanked Lebanon for promptly treating him.

Araghchi also spoke with Amani’s wife, ensuring Iran’s support for his recovery and offering assistance for his possible transfer to Tehran. 

The pagers that exploded were new and had been purchased by Hezbollah in recent months, a Lebanese security source has told CNN.  

The source did not provide any information on the exact date the pagers were purchased or their model.

Jordan on Tuesday said it would be ready to provide “any medical assistance needed by the Lebanese medical sector to treat thousands of Lebanese citizens who were injured,” following the deadly pager explosions.

During a phone call with Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati, Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi reiterated “Jordan’s support for Lebanon’s security, sovereignty and stability,” Jordan’s foreign ministry said in a statement.

Safadi also stressed the need to “stop the dangerous escalation witnessed in the region, through an immediate halt to the Israeli aggression on Gaza.”

Hamas has expressed solidarity with Hezbollah and the Lebanese people following the deadly pager explosions. 

Blaming Israel for the explosions, the group said in a statement, “We, in the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), strongly condemn the Zionist terrorist aggression that targeted Lebanese citizens by detonating communication devices in various areas of Lebanese territories, as well as civilian and service facilities.” 

“We value the jihad and sacrifices of our brothers in Hezbollah, and their determination to continue supporting and backing our Palestinian people in Gaza. We express our full solidarity with the Lebanese people and our brothers in Hezbollah, offering our heartfelt condolences to the families of the victims,” Hamas said. 

The Israeli military said earlier that it will not be commenting on the incident. 

For context: The pager explosions come amid increased hostility between Hezbollah and Israel, raising tensions in the region that have been heightened since Hamas’ attack on Israel in October 2023 and Israel’s ensuing war in Gaza.

Kim Ghattas, a Lebanese journalist and contributing writer to The Atlantic magazine, appears on CNN on Tuesday, September 17.

Kim Ghattas, a Lebanese journalist and contributing writer to The Atlantic magazine, told CNN that Hezbollah had recently “gone low tech” in an attempt to prevent more of its operatives from being assassinated.

Israel has not yet commented on the explosions. Hezbollah and the Lebanese government have blamed Israel for the attack.

Asked why Israel might have launched such an attack, Ghattas said there are two main explanations.

Background: In a speech in February, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah called on his fighters to do away with their mobile phones, telling them, “shut it off, bury it, put it in an iron chest and lock it up.”

“Do it for the sake of security and to protect the blood and dignity of people,” Nasrallah said, adding, “The collaborator (with the Israelis) is the cell phone in your hands, and those of your wife and your children. This cell phone is the collaborator and the killer.”

State Department Spokesperson Matthew Miller appears during a briefing on Tuesday, September 17.

The US was “not involved” in the series of pager explosions in Lebanon and was “not aware” of any attack in advance, according to a State Department spokesperson.

Miller would not say what information the US has so far, and would not say whether the US assesses that Israel is responsible or not.

Hezbollah and Lebanon have both blamed Israel for the attack, which injured about 2,800 people and killed at least nine people, according to the Lebanese health minister. The Israel Defense Forces did not comment.

“I don’t have any assessment to offer one way or other at this point,” said Miller.

Miller would not say if the US would make its own assessment, but said it was “gathering information through all of the ways in which we usually gather information.”

“I don’t want to prejudge what we’ll say in the days to come,” Miller said. 

Asked if there were indications that Iran could retaliate, given reports that the Iranian ambassador was injured, Miller said he did not want to speculate until those reports were confirmed. 

“I’ve seen the reports. I don’t want to speak to what the implications might be before a report is confirmed. But certainly, as is always the case, we would urge Iran not to take advantage of any incident, any instability, to try to add further instability and to further increase tensions in the region. That has been our message to Iran since October 7,” he said. 

Miller also repeated that the US believes there needs to be a diplomatic solution to the conflict in northern Israel with Hezbollah, and that it is important for Israel and Hamas to reach a ceasefire in order to make a diplomatic resolution in the north easier. 

Miller said it is “very, very difficult to get a diplomatic resolution in the north absent a resolution to the conflict in Gaza, absent a ceasefire in Gaza, which is why we continue to push for that ceasefire, because we think it’ll help make it much easier to reach a resolution.”

Miller would not say how the US views this attack affecting the ceasefire talks.