The exploding pagers and walkie-talkies in possession of armed group Hezbollah were laced with a powerful explosive called PETN, most likely concealed in the batteries, according to a source familiar with the device components.
Reuters reported that hundreds of walkie-talkies used by the group exploded on Wednesday, a day after thousands of Hezbollah’s pagers detonated across the group’s strongholds in Lebanon. The way the explosive material was integrated into the battery pack made it extremely difficult to detect, the source said.
Icom has said it halted production a decade ago of the radio models identified in the attack. Most of those still on sale were counterfeit, it said. Yoshiki Enomoto, the general manager of Icom’s security and trade division, told Reuters it was possible an older Icom device had been modified to make a bomb.
It would be difficult to insert an explosive device into the main compartment of the walkie-talkie because the electronics are packed tightly, the report stated. It was more likely to have been in the detachable battery pack, Enomoto told the Japanese broadcaster Fuji TV.
The Lebanese source said explosions had occurred even in cases where the battery pack was separated from the rest of the device.
A Lebanese security source told Reuters the pagers had been implanted with difficult-to-detect explosives. Another security source said up to three grams of explosives had been hidden in the new pagers. The source said this appears to have happened months before the blasts.
A second wave of explosions reportedly killed 20 people, while 12 people died and almost 3,000 more were injured when the pagers exploded. Hezbollah blamed Israel for the attacks, but the Israeli military has yet to comment.
