Yesterdaypagers explodedacross Lebanon as part of a coordinated attack against Hezbollah.
At least 12 people have died and thousands have been injured in the aftermath.
Area hospitals are struggling to keep up.
A police officer attempts to enter the office of Gold Apollo on September 18, 2024 in New Taipei City, Taiwan.© Photo by Annabelle Chih/Getty Images
The pagers began beeping at 3:30 p.m. local time on Tuesday.
Reports from the ground said that people believed they had received a message from Hezbollah leadership.
Seconds after the beeping began, the beepers exploded causing injuries to the owners and bystanders.
An NGO in Syria said that 14 people were injured there.
Fourth grader Fatima Abdullah, a nine-year-old girl, was one of two children who died in the attack.
She washolding it when it exploded.
Israel has neither confirmed nor denied its involvement in the attack, but the world assumes thatJerusalem is responsible.
Hezbollah and the civilian leadership of Lebanon have blamed Israel and promised retribution.
The United States said it was not involved in the attack, nor was it aware.
Whats a pager?
Where did these come from?
A pager, or a beeper, is a small and simple telecommunications machine.
Its typically a little plastic brick with an LCD screen and a speaker.
Most of them only receive messages, and often simple messages like a string of numbers.
As cell phones became ubiquitous, the beeper died the slow death that comes with any old technology.
But there were still use cases for the old rig.
Pagers transmit and receive signals via radio frequencies.
That means if cellphones or Wi-Fi go down, a pager still works.
For these reasons, pagers are perceived as more sturdy and secure than traditional communications devices.
Beepers are common in American hospitals where doctors and nursing staffuse themto communicate daily.
you could throw them in the toilet.
it’s possible for you to drop them.
And they run on a AA battery…like, forever.
Theyre like the cockroaches of communication, a doctortold NPR in 2023.
Also, pagers get better service.
They run on different wireless networks than cellphones, so theyre more reliable in an emergency, another explained.
Lebanons military has been fighting with Israel off and on forfive decades.
In February, Hezbollahs leader Hassan Nasrallah decried cell phones in a speech.
A beeper was supposed to be far more safe and secure.
The beepers used in the attack are the Gold Apollo Rugged Pager AR-924.
The AR-924 is the product of the Gold Apollo company in Taiwan.
Gizmodo attempted to reach the company but did not hear back.
This is very embarrassing, Hsu Ching-kuang, the companys founder, told journalists when they arrived on Wednesday.
To hear Hsu tell it, his company didnt make these pagers at all.
They said they wanted to cultivate a cohort of engineers, Hsu told NPR.
I told them, the stuff you make is neither easy to use nor is it aesthetically pleasing.
Why not just use my products?
Zoltan Kovacs, a spokesperson for the Hungarian government, released a statement this morning.
Hezbollah has been launching rockets into northern Israel since the attacks on October 7 of last year.
On Wednesday, it announced that it had once again hitIsraeli artillery positionsalong its border.
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