Hezbollah pagers explode all over Lebanon; Hezbollah claims they were used by "civilians"

From the Wall Street Journal:

Pagers carried by hundreds of Hezbollah operatives exploded Tuesday, leaving many of them injured in an unprecedented event that struck across Lebanon.
The affected pagers were from a new shipment that the group received in recent days, people familiar with the matter said. A Hezbollah official said hundreds of fighters had such devices, speculating that malware may have caused the devices to heat up and explode. The official said some people felt the pagers heat up and disposed of them before they burst.

Some potential victims said they felt the pagers heat up beforehand and got rid of them before the explosion.

So far, according to Lebanese health authorities, is 8 killed, 200 critically injured and 2,750 injured to some degree. 7 more were said to be killed in Syria.

When I first saw the story, I assumed that "somebody" had found a vulnerability in the pager software and fond that a set of commands could cause them to heat up and explode. But the WSJ report makes it sound more like a supply chain attack -"somebody" knew about this shipment and sabotaged it, perhaps even installing small explosives inside the devices that could be triggered by commands or heat, or more likely replacing the batteries with versions that would explode when exposed to a certain stimulus like a series of signals.

Almost certainly, and ironically, Hezbollah demanded that its many members communicate only with pagers because they felt that they were more secure than cell phones that could be hacked or eavesdropped on. One can be certain that everyone who had one of these pagers in their pocket or their belt was a Hezbollah member, making this attack as perfectly aligned with international law as is possible.

Hezbollah predictably is pretending that they were killing civilians - as if normal people would walk around with pagers instead of phones.

Hezbollah is only claiming that civilians were killed - claiming the death of a girl. What they don't say is that her terrorist father with the pager was next to her at the time, or whether he is alive.

Other details are coming out - a Hezbollah MP who was killed, a son of a Hezbollah leader said to have been killed.

One can be certain that the only people using that brand of pager in Lebanon are Hezbollah members. While there are still some some pager manufacturers, they re only for niche markets.

Like terrorists.

Here are two videos apparently of explosions.

And photos of victims: