Thousands of people in Beirut were injured yesterday (September 17), and at least 12 killed, after electronic pagers simultaneously exploded across the Lebanese capital. This is thought to have been a targeted attack on Hezbollah, a political party and paramilitary group which is currently in conflict with Israel, but many of the explosions were carried out in civilian areas, like supermarkets and busy roads, and among the victims were two children and a healthcare worker. According to the Lebanese Health Minister, around 2,650 people have been injured, with more than 200 of them in critical condition. The news of this attack was met with rumours, confusion and speculation online – here’s everything you need to know about what really happened. 

WHO WAS RESPONSIBLE?

Israel and Hezbollah have been involved in an active conflict since October 8 of last year, and many Israeli politicians and media figures have recently been campaigning for an escalation of hostilities. While Israel has yet to confirm whether it was behind the attacks, as Hezbollah alleges, it is by far the most likely culprit. Many pro-Israel commentators have themselves taken this view, either defending the operation as militarily justified or bragging about how clever it was. If Israel wants to deny its involvement, it should start by having a word with its own supporters.

Because the explosions took place in civilian areas, and there could have been no sure way of knowing who was holding the device at the time of detonation, this should be considered an ‘indiscriminate attack’, which is prohibited by the Geneva Conventions. If it was Israel, this would be the latest in a long series of war crimes. Several commentators have described the incident as an act of “terrorism”.

HOW DID THE PAGERS EXPLODE?

At first, there was a lot of speculation online that this was the result of a cyber-attack – the pagers had been hacked, causing the batteries to overheat and eventually explode. Understandably, lots of people were frightened at the idea that we are all walking around with ticking time bombs, that our mobile devices could kill us at any time. But this explanation didn’t quite add up – you could make a device overheat through hacking alone, but not to the point that it blows up.

While the exact details of what happened are still unclear, the most likely explanation is the devices had already been tampered with and then detonated from afar. Because pagers operate using radio waves, it’s possible that the radio network was hacked, which would trigger the devices – which had already been tampered with – to explode. 

As data analyst Ralph Baydoun told Al-Jazeera, the explosion could have happened solely as a result of the battery overheating, but this would only be possible if the pagers had been previously tampered with through doctored code. Speaking to the BBC, one munitions expert argued that it’s more likely that the devices were packed with explosives. Hezbollah itself shares this view, telling Reuters that “The Mossad [Israel’s intelligence agency] injected a board inside of the device that has explosive material that receives a code.

WHERE AND WHEN WERE THE PAGERS TAMPERED WITH?

This also still unclear. A senior Lebanese security source told Reuters that the pagers were brought into the country months ago, having been ordered by Hezbollah. The devices came from Gold Apollo, a tech firm based in Taiwan, but Gold Apollo hat they were manufactured in Hungary by a separate company which has the licence to use its brand name. This means that the tampering could have been carried out within the EU, and that a European company may be complicit in a grave war crime.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR THE REGION?

It should go without saying that this attack is not going to de-escalate tensions in the region. Maybe it’s not technically possible to be a “rogue state” when you have the backing of the world’s preeminent superpower, but Israel seems more reckless and antagonistic than ever – an unsurprising consequence of being allowed to act with total impunity. At this point we can only speculate on what will happen next (Iran and Hezbollah will surely retaliate in some way, Israel could be gearing up for an invasion of Southern Lebanon), but a large-scale regional war has just become a more likely outcome.