Israel caused thousands of Hezbollah terror group pagers to explode Tuesday, killing nine people and wounding nearly 3,000, amid fears that Hezbollah was about to uncover that the devices had been tampered with, according to Wednesday reports.
Israeli intelligence services originally wanted to detonate the pagers as an opening blow in an all-out war against Hezbollah, Axios reported, citing American and Israeli officials. They chose to act early, however, when a Hezbollah member became suspicious of the devices and planned to alert his superiors, Al-Monitor reported.
Just days earlier, a different Hezbollah member had come to suspect the devices had been tampered with, and then he was killed, Al-Monitor said.
Upon learning of the suspicions, Israeli leaders reportedly considered launching an immediate full-scale war in order to retain the pager attack as an opening blow. They also considered leaving things as they were, even at the risk of the operation being compromised, according to the Al-Monitor report.
Israel has not commented on the detonations, neither claiming nor denying responsibility.
The New York Times and Reuters reported Tuesday that Israeli agents had tampered with the pagers before they reached Lebanon, though it was not clear where the tampering had taken place.
“The Mossad injected a board inside of the device that has explosive material that receives a code. It’s very hard to detect it through any means. Even with any device or scanner,” a senior Lebanese security source told Reuters.
