Israel carried out a pager blast operation on Tuesday by hiding explosive material in a new batch of Taiwanese-made pagers imported to Lebanon, The New York Times exclusively reported, citing US and other officials briefed on the operation.

Namely, as they claim, Hezbollah ordered the pagers from the company "Gold Apollo" in Taiwan, and they were manipulated before arriving in Lebanon. Most of the pagers were the AP924 model, although three other Gold Apollo models were also included in the shipment.

Explosive material was embedded in each pager in addition to the battery, writes "New York Times" citing sources. A remote activated switch was also placed to activate the explosives.

At 15:30 p.m. local time in Lebanon, pager users received a message that appeared to come from Hezbollah leaders, the New York Times reported.

Instead, the message set off the explosive. At that moment, at least nine people died, and more than 2.800 were injured.

BREAKING: Thousands of messaging pages used by Hezbollah reportedly exploded all across Lebanon in a cyberattack straight out of a cyberpunk scifi novel.

More than a thousand Hezbollah members have been reportedly injured, according to Lebanese security sources. pic.twitter.com/knnCUpSEO9

- Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) September 17, 2024

According to the New York Times, the devices were programmed to play a sound for a few seconds before exploding.

Hezbollah, we recall, has already accused Israel of organizing the attack, but described only limited details of its understanding of the operation. Israel has not commented on the attack or said it was behind it.

U.S. and other officials spoke to The New York Times on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the operation.

Independent cybersecurity experts who have studied footage of the attack say it is clear that only a specific type of explosive material could have caused the size and speed of the blast.

"The alarms were probably modified to cause this kind of explosion, it wasn't just an overheated battery," Mikko Hypponen, a software expert and cybercrime adviser at Europol, told The New York Times.

Keren Elazari, an Israeli cybersecurity analyst for The New York Times, commented that Israel has hit Hezbollah where it is most vulnerable.

Namely, at the beginning of this year, the leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, severely restricted the use of mobile phones, which he considered increasingly vulnerable to Israeli surveillance.

"This attack hit them in the Achilles heel because they destroyed their central means of communication," Keren Elazari said.

At this point, the New York Times concludes, it remains unclear exactly when the pagers were ordered and when they arrived in Lebanon.