CNN
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Hundreds of pagers carried by Hezbollah members in Lebanon exploded almost simultaneously on Tuesday in an unprecedented attack that, in its scale and execution, surpasses a series of covert assassinations and cyber attacks in the region in recent years.

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

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

The Israeli military, which has been embroiled in clashes with Hezbollah since the war with the Iran-backed Palestinian militia Hamas began in the Gaza Strip last year, refused to comment publicly on the explosions.

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

Experts say the explosions, unprecedented in their scale and nature, underscore Hezbollah’s vulnerability, as its communications network has been compromised with deadly effect.

Several areas of the country were affected, particularly the southern suburbs of Beirut, a densely populated area that is a Hezbollah stronghold.

Footage showed shoppers and pedestrians collapsing on the street after the explosions. The injured, covered in blood, had flesh wounds, the clips showed, including lost fingers, bruised eyes and gashes to their stomachs.

At least nine people were killed, including a child, and around 2,800 people were injured. The Lebanese hospitals were completely overwhelmed.

Hezbollah has long portrayed secrecy as a cornerstone of its military strategy, eschewing high-tech equipment to protect itself from infiltration by Israeli and U.S. spyware.

Unlike other non-state actors in the Middle East, Hezbollah units are believed to communicate through an internal communications network, considered one of the key building blocks of the powerful group, which has long been accused of operating like a state within a state.

Earlier this year, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah called on his members and their families in southern Lebanon, where fighting with Israeli forces is raging across the border, to put away their mobile phones because he feared Israel could use the devices to track the movements of the Iran-backed terror network.

“Turn it off, bury it, put it in an iron box and lock it away,” he said in February. “The collaborator (with the Israelis) is the cell phone in your hands and those of your wife and children. That cell phone is the collaborator and the murderer.”

According to Avi Melamed, a former Israeli intelligence officer and Middle East analyst, Hezbollah instead went low-tech and used pagers.

The pagers would have encouraged Hezbollah members to contact each other via these telephone lines. But this option was not without risk either.

“Hezbollah has resorted to these devices again because they thought they would be safer for their fighters than cell phones that could be tracked by GPS,” Melamed said. “These very simple devices were used against them and probably added to the stress and embarrassment of their leaders.”

As Lebanon continues to reel from the impact of the attack, speculation is growing about how simple wireless communications devices may have been exploited.

The New York Times reported on Tuesday that Israel had hidden explosives in a shipment of pagers ordered from Taiwanese manufacturer Gold Apollo and destined for Hezbollah. A switch was built in to detonate the radios remotely, it said.

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

Several photos have emerged on social media showing what appear to be damaged gold Apollo pagers, alongside claims that they were damaged by the blast wave.

CNN cannot geolocate the social media images, but has confirmed they were posted on Tuesday, the same day as the explosions. At least one pager seen in the images is the Gold Apollo AR924 model. CNN has contacted the manufacturer for comment.

David Kennedy, a former intelligence analyst with the U.S. National Security Agency, told CNN that the explosions seen in videos shared online were “too large to be a remote and direct hack that would have overloaded the pager and caused the lithium battery to explode.”

Human agents within Hezbollah were crucial to the operation, he added.

“This is one of the most comprehensive and well-coordinated attacks I have personally ever seen. The complexity required to pull this off is incredible,” he said.

“This would have required many different intelligence components and execution. Human intelligence (HUMINT) would have been the primary method of accomplishing this, along with supply chain interception to make changes to the pagers.”

At least part of the message to Hezbollah is clear: “We can reach you anywhere, anytime, on the day and at the time of our choosing, and we can do it at the push of a button,” said John Miller, CNN’s chief law enforcement and intelligence analyst.

The operation also likely aimed to create widespread paranoia among Hezbollah members, impair their ability to recruit soldiers, and undermine confidence in Hezbollah’s leadership and its ability to protect its operations and soldiers.

Amos Yadlin, former head of Israel’s military intelligence and one of the country’s leading strategy experts, said the Israeli attack demonstrated “very impressive penetration capabilities, technology and intelligence.”

He speculated on X that Israel might have sent Nasrallah a warning.

“It appears the goal was to send a message that exacerbates Nasrallah’s dilemma: How much is he willing to pay if he continues to attack Israel and support (Hamas leader Yahya) Sinwar?” Yadlin wrote. “The organization, which prides itself on secrecy and high levels of security, has been infiltrated and exposed.”

When asked why Israel might have launched such an attack, Kim Ghattas, a Lebanese journalist and guest writer for The Atlantic magazine, told CNN that it could be an attempt to “intimidate Hezbollah into submission and make it clear that an increase in their attacks on Israel will be met with even more violence.”

Or it could be “a prelude to a major Israeli campaign against (Lebanon) at a time when Hezbollah is facing the chaos of this latest, science-fiction-like attack on its activists.”

Israel, which has not yet commented publicly on the deadly incident, is at the top of the list of actors intent on weakening Hezbollah, according to experts.

Israel is also one of a small group of countries that have the technological capability to infiltrate a supply chain in this way. “What intelligence agency has the proven ability to pull off such an operation? The list is very short, and Israel is at the top,” said Miller, the CNN analyst.

Israel has been linked or blamed for previous long-range attacks in the region. Experts believe Israel and the United States were responsible for the use of a complex computer virus called Stuxnet that destroyed centrifuges at an Iranian nuclear facility in 2009 and 2010.

In 2020, an Iranian nuclear scientist was assassinated in Tehran by a remote-controlled machine gun fired from a car that reportedly had facial recognition. This year, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed with an explosive device hidden in the guesthouse where he was staying in the Iranian capital, a source familiar with the matter told CNN. Iran blamed Israel for the assassinations.

Tuesday’s attack heightens tensions in the already heated region. Hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah are at an all-time high following Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7. Hezbollah, which has a huge arsenal of weapons, has said its attacks on Israel are a show of solidarity with Hamas and the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

World leaders are trying to prevent an escalation. Two US defense officials said that US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin spoke twice with his Israeli counterpart Yoav Gallant.

The official declined to specify when the calls took place. Although the two are in regular contact, it is unusual for them to schedule two calls in one day. This shows how seriously the US is taking the current situation.