‘I’M NOT RISKING MY LIFE FOR THIS JOB’: FEAR AND PANIC ON THE STREETS OF BEIRUT
BEIRUT – At 3pm on Wednesday, Beirut’s southern suburbs seemed almost deserted. Streets were quiet and visitors had disappeared from the café across from the famous Mar Mikhael church.
The café, usually bustling with a mix of customers ranging from women in hijabs to others dressed in the latest fashion, represents the cultural diversity Hezbollah has maintained in this area where it holds significant influence.
After an hour of sitting there, Aya, a young waitress in her twenties who lives in the Sunni area of Tariq el-Jdideh, hastily began gathering her belongings to leave her shift early.
“I’m not going to risk my life, my hands, or my eyes for this job. I need to leave,” she told her manager.
Aya had just learned a new wave of explosions had taken place, a day after the “cursed Tuesday” attack that saw thousands of pagers simultaneously detonate, killing 12 and injuring nearly 3,000 others.
This time, the exploding devices were hand-held radios, with one attack carried out during the funeral of Mahdi Ammar, the son of Hezbollah MP Ali Ammar, in Ghobeiry. Wireless devices exploded in the hands of security personnel tasked with protecting key figures attending the funeral.
Images of the exploded walkie-talkies showed labels bearing the name of Japanese radio communications and telephone company ICOM and resembled the firm’s model IC-V82 device, Reuters reported. However similar devices are used by other industries.
In the café, there were two such devices, used by staff to communicate with the kitchen and relay customer orders. Ali, another waiter in his early twenties, picked them up and proudly held them high, saying, “We never know when they might explode!”
Along with Aya, it was time to leave as news of more bloodshed began to pour in. Wireless devices had exploded in several homes in Rweiss, Ghobeiry, and Hay el-Sellom – all densely populated areas.
Many of these devices had been left at homes after the first wave of attacks, when Hezbollah had asked its supporters who possessed them to avoid using them, which they did.
They were stored in drawers, on shelves, or behind televisions, never expecting Israel to target them. As a consequence, the second day’s death toll was disastrous for civilians. According to Lebanon’s Ministry of Health, 14 people were killed in the second wave, and more than 450 civilians were injured.
The Lebanese Civil Defence announced that it had extinguished fires in 60 homes and shops caused by the explosion of wireless devices in Nabatieh, southern Lebanon. A woman was critically injured in a house fire in Hermel, in the Beqaa Valley, caused by an exploding solar battery.
Soon after, Hezbollah distributed an unsigned notice through WhatsApp groups linked to pro-Hezbollah media outlets, stating: “We ask all our people in Lebanon who own communication or solar power devices that rely on lithium batteries to immediately stop using these batteries by disconnecting them from the devices, as Israel’s criminal war against our people will continue in the coming days and weeks.
“We must demonstrate national awareness and consciousness of the risks posed by using communication devices powered by lithium batteries. May God protect our people and grant us victory over the Zionist occupier.”
Journalist Salwa Fadl, who lives in the densely populated Mreijeh area in the heart of Beirut’s southern suburbs, reported that hospitals were packed with the wounded, especially those who had lost their eyes.
The Lebanese Army and Hezbollah security forces had imposed a tight security cordon. Salwa noted that her young niece, who had recently undergone a minor surgery unrelated to the explosions, was asked to return home as her condition had improved, and no more beds were available.
The child had left behind a toy at the hospital, but security hadprevented her family from re-entering. This is the state of hospitals in Beirut’s southern suburbs. The hysteria of families and relatives visiting their loved ones is indescribable, but Lebanese security forces are barring anyone from visiting a patient unless they are close relatives.
Lebanese and foreign journalists who flocked to the suburbs were only allowed to cover the situation from outside the hospital. They were not permitted to enter or speak to the families of the injured.
Amid the hysterical atmosphere, the main question remains: How were the devices detonated? And what do batteries have to do with it?
Rabih Baalbaki, an expert in digital governance who is a strategic consultant and head of the Digital Innovations Committee at the Arab Internet and Telecommunications Union under the Arab League, told i that from a technical standpoint, “the breach occurred on three levels.”
“The first level involves the suppliers of these devices. It is thought that the supplier of these devices was breached. To this day, it remains unclear who exactly the Hungarian company ‘BAC’ is, which is alleged to have sold the devices and transported them from Europe to Lebanon.”
A representative for BAC Consulting has denied any involvement, while a website for the company has since been taken down.
“This significant alteration inside the devices points to the supplier, as whoever breached it must have obtained information from the supplying company, which informed them of the destination of this large number of devices – 5,000 in total,” Mr Baalbaki said.
On Wednesday, the founder and president of Gold Apollo – the company whose brand was on the exploding pagers – Hsu Ching-kuang said his company was not responsible for the devices. The company said in a statement that the AR-924 model was produced and sold by Budapest-based BAC, Reuters reported.
BAC Consulting chief executive, Cristiana Bársony-Arcidiacono, also denied her company was behind it, saying “I don’t make the pagers. I am just the intermediate. I think you got it wrong” in a statement to NBC News. Meanwhile, i reported that Gold Apollo was subject to a hack last year which stole information about the firm’s activities.
The second breach of security involves modifications to the devices themselves, Mr Baalbaki said.
“Such alterations could not have been made during transport, as the devices were too numerous, and the task would require dismantling each device to carry out the changes,” he explained.
The third breach involved giving the detonation command through a cyber attack on the device, Mr Baalbaki said.
“When the device’s internal charge was activated, it was triggered by a cyber attack – meaning that the pre-installed program, once it received a command, caused the devices to detonate within three seconds, igniting the detonator.”
Mr Baalbaki also explained he had spoken to Moroccan scientist Rachid Yazami – an engineer and inventor renowned for his role in developing lithium batteries – who told him that the batteries would explode at 200 degrees.
An explosion requires connecting the positive and negative terminals, and it is impossible to do so unless the device’s control mechanism is tampered with, Mr Baalbaki said.
This implies the “explosive force we witnessed cannot be caused by lithium alone” and some type of chip was implanted inside the device, he added.
“[Lithium] cannot cause the kind of bodily injuries we have seen—severed hands, facial wounds, liver damage. So, it is certain that when the small optical chip was implanted inside the device, it was difficult to detect because it was implanted for the first time.”
Some victims reported that the device suddenly became hot, which, according to Mr Baalbaki, is likely to indicate the explosion of the lithium battery, giving an additional charge to the explosion, as a detonator requires energy.
Mr Baalbaki said this means that Hezbollah now has the answers to what happens as it is still in possession of many of the unused devices and “now understands the nature of the explosive element inside the devices and the type of communication that occurred” when they were detonated.
“They gave the green light for people to carry the devices, causing them to explode in their hands,” he said.
“What happened is unprecedented. Espionage was used to identify the supplier and the destination of the devices, and digital hacking gave the command to detonate. This poses a significant threat unlike anything we have seen in the history of electronic warfare.”
2024-09-19T14:08:18Z dg43tfdfdgfd