Civil aviation leaders in Lebanon announced on Thursday that passengers would no longer be allowed to bring pagers and walkie-talkies on flights, either in carry-on luggage or checked, after hundreds of the devices exploded nationwide this week.
The explosions are believed to be targeted attacks against members of jihadist terrorist organization Hezbollah. Hezbollah leaders, fearing infiltration by the Israeli government, reportedly began shifting communications away from modern technology and adapted to using pagers in the past year as a result of its war against Israel following the Hamas massacres on October 7, 2023. Reports surfaced on Tuesday that pagers began exploding simultaneously in multiple major cities in Lebanon and some sites in Syria, where Hezbollah operates as an ally of the rogue Iranian regime. On Wednesday, a separate wave of explosions occurred, reportedly tied to walkie-talkie devices, solar panels, and other technology.
The Lebanese government, and Hezbollah, blamed the government of Israel for the attacks, but have not offered any evidence directly linking Israel to the attacks. The Israeli government has neither taken responsibility for the blasts nor addressed them with any specificity, though it did hint at an imminent full-scale war against Hezbollah immediately following the explosions. The Israeli Air Force (IAF) interrupted Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah’s first public address following the explosions, buzzing over Beirut, on Thursday.
Beirut’s airport reportedly told passengers on Friday that, out of concern that more devices would soon explode and could do so on a plane, walkie-talkies and pagers were banned from flights. Reuters reported that the ban extended to air shipments of cargo in addition to passenger aircraft. The ban will reportedly be in place indefinitely.
Qatar Airways published a similar announcement on Thursday banning the affected communications devices from flights out of Beirut.
“Following the directive received from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation of the Republic of Lebanon, all passengers flying from Beirut Rafic Hariri International Airport (BEY) are prohibited from carrying pagers and walkie-talkies on board flights,” Qatar Airways informed. “The ban applies to both checked and carry-on luggage, as well as cargo, and will be enforced until further notice.”
The explosions have unleashed a wave of fear in Lebanon, as many detonated in public on Tuesday and Wednesday, killing an estimated 12 people and injuring thousands. While many of those injured were Hezbollah jihadists, some of the victims were identified as civilians, including children. The explosions on Tuesday set off panic in Lebanon’s healthcare system as hospitals received a large influx of patients and scrambled to provide blood.
“There was blood everywhere, people without eyes, holes in their back and their hands covered in blood,” a woman who identified herself as the mother of a dead Hezbollah terrorist told Emirati newspaper the National while awaiting treatment for relatives at a Lebanese hospital.
The second wave of explosions occurred in devices considered more modern than the pagers, including laptops and mobile phones, in addition to the walkie-talkies. Al Jazeera reported 20 killed and more than 450 wounded on Wednesday – and widespread panic among Lebanese who were attempting to avoid the explosions by distancing themselves from devices. One woman speaking to the Qatari outlet, a wedding planner, said her team typically uses walkie-talkies to communicate logistics during weddings but would no longer do so because they “really don’t know what’s happening.”
How the devices were turned into mobile bombs remains unclear at press time. Reuters, citing anonymous sources, reported on Friday that the walkie-talkies “were laced with a highly explosive compound known as PETN” that may have been packed into the battery area of the devices.
“A Lebanese security source had earlier told Reuters that the pagers had been implanted with explosives that were difficult to detect,” the outlet reported. “Another security source told Reuters that up to three grams (0.11 ounce) of explosives had been hidden in the new pagers, apparently months before the blasts.”
The pagers implicated all reportedly featured the branding of the Taiwanese company Gold Apollo, one of the few companies still manufacturing pagers in the 21st century. The company has insisted that it did not manufacture the devices, however, and that those implicated in the attack were outsourced to a mysterious supplier based in Hungary. Gold Apollo reportedly plans to sue the company. Similarly, the Japanese company Icom, whose walkie-talkie models were implicated in Wednesday’s blasts, told the media that it had not manufactured the particular model used in the attacks for at least a decade.
“The IC-V82 is a handheld radio that was produced and exported, including to the Middle East, from 2004 to October 2014. It was discontinued about 10 years ago, and since then, it has not been shipped from our company,” Icom said in a statement. “The production of the batteries needed to operate the main unit has also been discontinued, and a hologram seal to distinguish counterfeit products was not attached, so it is not possible to confirm whether the product shipped from our company.”
Some reports have suggested that the walkie-talkies originated in China, where e-commerce companies flagrantly violate copyrights and produce counterfeit products.
Israel and Hezbollah have been in a state of de facto open war since October 7, when fellow Iran-backed terrorist group Hamas invaded Israel and killed an estimated 1,200 civilians, in addition to committing acts of torture, gang rape, and other atrocities. Hezbollah’s attacks on northern Israel have resulted in the evacuation of 60,500 people, a situation the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to resolve as soon as possible.
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Joel B. Pollak / Breitbart NewsOn Wednesday, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) chief of staff Herzi Halevi said his country was “very determined to create the security conditions that will return the residents [of northern Israel] to their homes, to the communities, with a high level of security, and we are ready to do all that is required to bring about these things.”
“We still have many capabilities that we have not yet activated,” Halevi noted.
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