SINGAPORE: Even by the standards of the Middle Eastmanilaplay, the pager attacks on Tuesday (Sep 17) in Lebanon, which killed nine and injured thousands, would have left keen observers of the region taken aback by their scale and audacity.
The region is where a suspected artificial intelligence-assisted, remote-controlled weapon was used to kill Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, then Iran’s top nuclear scientist, as he drove to his country home in 2020. It was also where Hamas’ political leader Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in July, by a bomb allegedly planted months ahead of his trip to Iran in the room he was to occupy at a highly secure guest facility.
Tuesday’s pager attacks, however, were on another level.
Whether they were rigged with explosives before being delivered to members of Iran-aligned Lebanese militia Hezbollah or were targets of a cyberattackmanilaplay, planning for thousands of them to be triggered at the same time required an extraordinary level of planning and sophistication.
A police officer inspects a car in which a hand-held pager exploded, in Beirut, Lebanon, Sep 17, 2024. (Photo: AP/Hussein Malla)