Turkey thwarted remote pager attack in Lebanon, officials say

ANKARA, Turkey — Turkey’s intelligence service thwarted a remote attack using pagers last year in Lebanon, days after similar attacks by Israel killed dozens and wounded thousands, including members of Lebanon’s Hezbollah terrorist group, a Turkish daily and officials said Tuesday.

Daily Sabah reported that 1,300 pagers and 710 chargers rigged with explosives were confiscated inside a cargo shipment at Istanbul Airport that was on its way to Beirut from Hong Kong.

A Turkish security official, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with regulations, confirmed the report but would not provide further details.

In Beirut, Hezbollah’s chief spokesman Youssef el-Zein told The Associated Press on Tuesday that days after the Sept. 17 pagers attack in Lebanon and Syria, Hezbollah informed Turkish intelligence that a shipment of pagers was in Turkey and about to be sent to Lebanon.

El-Zein said Turkish authorities confiscated the pagers and most likely destroyed them. He had no further details.

The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the report.

Israel triggered the Sept. 17 attack when pagers all over Lebanon started beeping. The devices exploded even if a person carrying one failed to push buttons to read an incoming encrypted message.

The next day, Israel activated walkie-talkies, some of which exploded at funerals for some of the people who were killed in the pager attacks.

Daily Sabah said that acting on a tip that a shipment of pager devices would be in Istanbul to be delivered to Lebanon two days after the attacks, Turkish intelligence agents launched an operation.

The newspaper said that authorities discovered a shipment that arrived in Istanbul from Hong Kong one day before the Lebanon explosions. The cargo had 61 boxes and was scheduled to depart from Istanbul to Beirut on Sept. 27 through Istanbul Airport. The cargo was described as a shipment of food choppers, Daily Sabah said. Inside, authorities found 1,300 Gold Apollo brand pagers and 710 desktop chargers.

After the pagers attack, Israel expanded the war against Hezbollah. On Sept. 27, Israeli airstrikes on a southern suburb of Beirut killed Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader and one of its founding members, in the biggest blow for the Iran-backed group.

The war ended on Nov. 27, when a U.S.-brokered ceasefire went into effect.