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

The Iran-backed militant group said the wireless devices began detonating around 3:30 p.m. local time during a targeted Israeli strike against Hezbollah members.

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

The Israeli military, which has been involved in hostile attacks with Hezbollah since the start of the war with the Iran-backed Palestinian militant group Hamas in Gaza last year, has refused to publicly comment 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 information on the exact date the pagers were purchased or their model.

According to experts, the explosions, which are unprecedented in size and nature, highlight Hezbollah’s vulnerability as the terrorist organization’s communications network has been compromised with deadly consequences.

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

Images showed shoppers and pedestrians collapsing in the street after the explosions. The blood-soaked wounded had flesh wounds, clips showed, including lost fingers, damaged eyes and cuts to the abdomen.

At least nine people were killed, including a child, and about 2,800 were injured. Lebanese hospitals were overcrowded.

Hezbollah has long considered secrecy a cornerstone of its military strategy. They do not use sophisticated equipment to prevent infiltration by Israeli and American spyware.

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.

Earlier this year, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah urged members and their families in southern Lebanon, where fighting is taking place on the border with Israeli troops, to throw away their mobile phones. He feared that 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 up,” he said in February. “The collaborator (with the Israelis) is the cell phone in your hands, and in the hands of your wife and your children. This cell phone is the collaborator and the murderer.”

According to Avi Melamed, a former Israeli intelligence officer and Middle East analyst, Hezbollah has gone low-tech and switched to pagers.

The pagers would have encouraged Hezbollah members to contact each other through those phone lines. But even that option was not without risk.

“Hezbollah went back to these devices, thinking they would be safer for its fighters than phones that could be targeted by GPS,” Melamed said. “These very low-tech devices were used against them and very likely increased the stress and shame of its leaders.”

As Lebanon continues to reel from the onslaught, speculation is mounting about how low-tech wireless communications equipment could be misused.

The New York Times reported Tuesday that Israel hid explosives in a shipment of pagers ordered from Taiwanese manufacturer Gold Apollo and destined for Hezbollah. A switch was built in to detonate them remotely, it added.

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 surfaced on social media showing damaged Gold Apollo pagers, and claims that they were damaged by the blast wave.

CNN was unable to geolocate the images on social media, but verified that 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 for the U.S. National Security Agency, told CNN that the explosions seen in videos shared online “appear too large to be a remote, direct hack that would overload the pager and cause an explosion of the lithium battery.”

Human agents within Hezbollah would play a key role in the operation, he added.

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

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

According to CNN Chief Law Enforcement and Intelligence Analyst John Miller, at least part of the message to Hezbollah is clear: “We can reach you anywhere, anytime, on the day and time of our choosing, and we can do it with the push of a button.”

The operation was also likely intended to create a high level of paranoia among Hezbollah members, undermine their ability to recruit people, and undermine confidence in Hezbollah’s leadership and their ability to secure their activities and people.

Amos Yadlin, former head of Israeli military intelligence and one of the country’s top strategic experts, said the Israeli attack showed “very impressive penetration capabilities, technology and intelligence.”

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

“It appears that the goal was to spread a message that exacerbates Nasrallah’s dilemma: How much is he willing to pay to continue attacking Israel and supporting (Hamas leader Yahya) Sinwar?” Yadlin wrote. “The organization, which prides itself on secrecy and a high level of security, found itself penetrated and exposed.”

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

Or it could be a “prelude to a large-scale Israeli campaign against (Lebanon), at a time when Hezbollah is dealing with the chaos of this latest, very science-fictional attack on its operatives.”

According to experts, Israel, which has yet to publicly comment on the deadly incident, is at the top of the list of actors seeking to undermine Hezbollah.

It is also one of the few countries with the technological capacity to infiltrate a supply chain in such a way. “What intelligence agency has the demonstrative capacity to conduct such an operation? That’s a very short list with Israel at the top,” said Miller, the CNN analyst.

Israel has been linked to or accused of previous remote attacks in the region. Experts believe Israel and the United States were responsible for deploying 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 with a remote-controlled machine gun operated from a car that reportedly used facial recognition. This year, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed with an explosive device secretly 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 killings.

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

World leaders have been scrambling to prevent an escalation. U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin spoke twice with his Israeli counterpart, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, two U.S. defense officials said.

The official declined to specify when the talks took place. While the two are in regular contact, scheduling two talks on one day is unusual and shows how seriously the US is taking the current situation.