Twelve people are killed and thousands are injured as thousands of pagers explode in Lebanon.

Twelve people were killed and 2,800 injured in a series of well-planned pager explosions that took place in southern Beirut and the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon. CNN reports that Hezbollah, a Shia Islamist political party and paramilitary organization in Lebanon, was the target of the explosions. 

Investigations were still ongoing to determine what caused the blasts. According to Reuters, preliminary findings indicated that either defective batteries or explosives inserted into the pagers caused the explosions. The next day, radios, computers, and walkie-talkies all exploded, leaving 450 injured and 20 dead.

Consulting firm representatives Le Beck and Predicta Lab informed CNN that the pager explosions were probably caused by hardware tampering. Cyberattacks were excluded as potential causes. The latter company proposed that the harmful changes might have been made prior to the bulk order being shipped to the nation. A shipment of pagers was held in a port for three months while import documentation was processed, according to Aljazeera. 

Additionally, they stated that preliminary research revealed the pagers included one to three grams of pentaerythritol tetranitrate in addition to metal balls, most likely to enhance the explosion's impact. According to The National (Abu Dhabi), the attack was purportedly planned to take place prior to Hezbollah beginning an inquiry into the inconsistent battery life of many pagers from the batch.

Gold Apollo, a Taiwanese corporation, was the owner of the pagers brand. According to a statement issued by Gold Apollo on Wednesday, BAC Consulting KFT, a business situated in Hungary's capital, produced the AR-924 pagers. 

According to CNN, Hungarian authorities disputed that BAC Consulting KFT was the manufacturer of the pagers. BAC Consulting KFT's CEO informed NBC News that the company was "simply the intermediate" and did not produce the pagers. 

Records showed that BAC was registered to a building with other organizations registered at the same address, which was not BAC's manufacturing plant, according to the BBC. While the UN demanded an investigation, Mary Ellen O'Connell, a law professor at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, USA, denounced the attacks, stating that "[w]eaponizing an object used by people is completely banned." According to Reuters, Lebanon's foreign ministry referred to the event as a "Israeli cyberattack".