There’s a new report out tonight that suggests the exploding pagers weren’t because of the lithium battery being overheated by some Israeli hack to the network.
Rather, the report says Israel intercepted a shipment of pagers headed for Lebanon and embedded explosives near the battery and a switch which could active the explosive material.
Here’s more from the New York Times:
Hundreds of pagers blew up at the same time across Lebanon on Tuesday in an apparently coordinated attack that targeted members of Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed militant group in the region, Lebanese and Hezbollah officials said.
The Israeli military declined to comment, but American and other officials briefed on the operation said Israel was responsible for the attack and had executed it by hiding small amounts of explosive material in each pager within a new batch of pagers made in Taiwan and imported into Lebanon.
Three officials briefed on the attack said that the operation had targeted hundreds of pagers belonging to Hezbollah operatives who have used such devices for years to make it harder for their messages to be intercepted. The use of pagers had became even more widespread after the Oct. 7 attacks, when