Pager and walkie-talkie attacks on Hezbollah were audacious and carefully planned

Israel is widely believed to be behind the operations – but who made the devices, and how did they explode?

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It may be years before the full story is told of how coordinated explosions of thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah was orchestrated. But, even without Israel publicly admitting responsibility, it is clear that the attack must have been carefully planned – however uncertain its consequences.

Experts generally believe a small mount of stable explosive was carefully implanted into each sabotaged device. Alan Woodward, a professor of cybersecurity at Surrey University, says: “There wouldn’t need to be much explosive, as proximity to a human body means it would cause injury even if it was a few grams.”