Two large-scale, coordinated attacks this week rocked Lebanon — the latest iteration in a historical pattern of booby-trapping electronics.
On Tuesday, one attack caused pagers to explode across Lebanon and Syria, injuring thousands of people and killing at least 12, including a 9-year-old girl and an 11-year-old boy. A second wave of bombings unfolded on Wednesday, when explosives detonated inside a slew of hand-held radios across the country, leaving nine dead and 300 wounded, according to reports.
Israel, which is widely assumed to be behind both attacks, reportedly booby-trapped pagers used by Hezbollah members, carrying out a similar feat with the hand-held radios. The bombings appear to be supply-chain attacks — meaning the gadgets were tampered with or outright replaced with rigged devices containing explosives and a detonator at some point prior to arriving in the hands of the targets. Hezbollah, which also attributes the exploding electronics to Israel, had reportedly recently switched en masse to using pagers for communications to evade Israeli surveillance. ….more
