Istanbul - Saba:
Turkish media revealed on Tuesday that Turkish intelligence had foiled a plot to send booby-trapped pagers to Lebanon.
The Turkish newspaper Sabah reported that Turkish intelligence had thwarted a shipment of 1,300 booby-trapped pagers similar to those that exploded during the Israeli operation against Hezbollah in Lebanon in September 2024.
The Turkish newspaper reported that "the Turkish National Intelligence Directorate received a report that a shipment of pagers similar to those that exploded in Lebanon (September 17-18) had arrived in Istanbul. The shipment, which was on a flight from Hong Kong on September 16, carried 850 kilograms of cargo and was scheduled to be sent to Lebanon on September 27."
The newspaper reported that "the shipment consisted of pre-prepared food, but explosives experts at Istanbul Airport examined it and found that the food crates contained 1,300 Gold Apollo pagers with chargers, 710 laptop chargers, cables, and batteries."
The shipment was handed over to forensic experts for examination, who found it to be similar to the pagers and radios that exploded in Lebanon. "A 3-gram explosive was found in the battery pack and the pagers, which could detonate when a strong signal is received... Explosives were also found in the laptop chargers," according to the Turkish newspaper.
Shortly after, Istanbul Airport officials raised the alarm about another plane carrying a shipment from Taiwan that was supposed to be sent to Beirut. However, no explosives were found during the inspections, the newspaper reported. The owner of the Turkish company that received the shipment was questioned, but the suspicions against him were not confirmed.
According to them, in the first stage, Mossad found a way to install an explosive device inside the radio batteries, which the intelligence agency had produced and sold through a network of foreign front companies to Lebanese Hezbollah, at a "good price"—not too high or too low. In total, Hezbollah purchased more than 16,000 booby-trapped devices produced by Israel.
To install explosives in the pagers, Mossad increased the size of the original model but added additional features, including dust and water resistance, to convince Hezbollah to purchase them. The Israeli intelligence agency also produced videos and manuals about the pagers and posted them online.
On September 17 and 18, 2024, Hezbollah pagers, including communication devices and radios, exploded in various parts of Lebanon. According to official data, 32 people were killed and more than 3,000 others were injured. The detonation of the explosives secretly planted in the devices was a prelude to a comprehensive Israeli military operation against Hezbollah.
Last February, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a war criminal, gifted US President Donald Trump a golden pager similar to the ones that exploded in Lebanon, as a commemoration of the operation against the Lebanese Hezbollah. Russian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Maria Zakharova described the events in Lebanon as a brutal terrorist act and an attempt to ignite a major conflict.
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