“The walkie talkies suddenly became hot to the touch, then exploded, not only shattering flesh and bone, but also sending small metal fragments flying in the air.”
On Tuesday, September 17th , at about 1.30pm Nigerian time, a strange series of explosions began to go off in people’s hands and pockets in different parts of Lebanon, in the Middle East. The explosions were occurring in personal pagers, a form of communication that was popular with the militant group Hezbollah. The pager would vibrate, as if it had a message. When the individual reached into his pocket it would explode.
Many pagers exploded in the pockets of the people who carried them. The resulting injuries were most devastating, occurring to the hands or in the midriff, taking off huge chunks of flesh and muscle from victims’ bodies.
Twelve people were killed that day. Although most of them were in civilian attire, two of the dead were acknowledged to be Hezbollah soldiers. Two children died. 2,750 men, women and children sustained injuries.
The large number of wounded reflected the general panic experienced all around, from open streets to marketplaces to banks and offices, as people saw and heard explosions going off around them. It was like watching some synchronised scene in a horror movie. The Emergency services were at full stretch, ferrying victims to hospitals. Hospitals were crowded with bleeding patients and distressed relatives.
Pagers were in common use among Hezbollah cadres as a low technology communication gadget. The leader of the group had earlier in the year advised his men to discard their cell phones, after the sensational assassination of some key functionaries who were suspected to have been tracked and targeted through their phones by the Israelis. Pagers were immune from such risk – or were they?
From all directions, fingers were already pointing at Israel, the old and present enemy.
With high emotions eddying around, arrangements were set in motion in different places where death had occurred to bury the dead the next day, according to Islamic practice.
As Wednesday September 18th came by, and burials got under way, another, even deadlier wave of explosions sounded at separate locations in different towns and cities. This time the exploding gadgets were walkie-talkie handsets – a common communication tool in the country, especially for members of Hezbollah. The walkie talkies suddenly became hot to the touch, then exploded, not only shattering flesh and bone, but also sending small metal fragments flying in the air.
Thirty people were confirmed dead in this new wave. More than seven hundred and fifty Lebanese were injured.
It was clear now that this all amounted to a devastating attack against the Shia militant group, which had been trading lethal bric-a-brac with Israel since October 7 last year when the Israeli retaliatory offensive against Hamas in Gaza began.
Beyond the shock and consternation of the Lebanese, who condemned the attacks as terrorism and War Crimes against a civilian population, speculations went rife in press and public discussion about how these attacks could have major unintended consequences for air travel and public safety word wide.The first rumour that went round was that cell phones had been targeted and their lithium batteries remotely detonated. Traditionally, cell phones, although not forbidden on aircraft, were required to be switched off for the duration of the flight, for the stated reason that the signals could interfere with the aircraft’s navigation devices.
Things got worse following the ‘9-11’ Al-Qaida attacks in the USA, and other incidents around the world. The thought that a phone could carry an explosive charge or could be used to trigger an explosive device was a worry for public safety experts. At a certain point in time, even the smallest quantity of any liquid was barred from being taken on board, for similar reasons.
The safety protocols in aircraft have been substantially relaxed in recent times. In many aircraft, people are even allowed to make in-flight calls.
There are many issues surrounding the events of September 17th and 18th . If the explosions had been carried out anywhere else in the world, or if the perpetrators had been different, they would have been labelled – on CNN and all the ‘Free Press’ as what they clearly were – a major terrorist operation, designed to kill and maim as many people as possible, and to strike fear into people’s hearts. The main target was Hezbollah which was in undeclared war with Israel over Gaza, but it was predictable that non-combatants, including women and children, would die or be maimed, as has been the case.
It has since emerged that this was a long, elaborately planned Intelligence operation, involving the cloning of specialised communication devices at secret locations, while giving the impression that the items were made and bought from parent companies in the Taiwan-Hungary axis, or in Japan. Hezbollah’s enemies knew the organisation was planning to order a large consignment of these gadgets.. Somehow their procurement processes fell for the ‘operation’, and Lebanese border security failed to detect that the imported gadgets, which were apparently in excellent working order, had been expertly packed with bombs. At an appointed time, the bombs were detonated remotely, simultaneously.
These are dangerous times, and not all the subterfuge or the science around the incidents of the 17th and 18th in Lebanon have yet come to light, or even the thinking behind their timing. The fallout for the rest of the world is that the ‘brilliant’ deadly actions executed ‘successfully’ by people who are receiving a wink and a nod from the ‘mainstream’ world are almost certain to inspire other ‘brilliant’ men who are not so favoured by the world and its press, to use similar tactics to unleash targeted mayhem without compunction. As usual, the innocent public may be caught in the middle.
The world may just have become a more dangerous place.
