Lebanon Faces New Threat to Its Security – Paranoia

Fear and confusion has gripped Lebanese residents following two straight days during which thousands of electronic devices exploded, killing more than 30 people and injuring thousands more, some critically, according to media reports.

Although the booby-trapped devices were targeted against Hezbollah members, a number of civilians and children were killed and injured by the exploding gadgets. Many are now wondering if this was the end of the attack or just the beginning.

On Wednesday evening and during the day on Thursday, wild and unconfirmed rumors began to spread on social media that laptops, cell phones, solar panels, fridges and batteries had also begun to explode, leading to yet more casualties.

The paranoia extended to Defense Mirror, a media outlet that declares itself “one of the most prominent defense and aerospace news portals in the world,” which picked up on the air of panic. It reported on Thursday afternoon, citing “eyewitnesses,” that “a day after pagers and mobile radios exploded across Lebanon, several hundred laptops and mobile phones exploded across the country today.”

Defense Mirror then quoted an unnamed Arabic media source as saying, “In addition to the mined communication devices that passed through Mossad-approved suppliers more than five months earlier, Israeli programmers wrote a software add-on for dozens of other devices with Wi-Fi / LTE modules that supplies excess current and voltage to batteries during charging… [which] provokes the activation of accelerated chemical processes in batteries [causing them] to overheat and ignite.”

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While this was yet to be picked up or verified by other news outlets, most reported the sense of panic among ordinary Lebanese. As the military and police were reported to be conducting controlled explosions of suspicious devices found in locations around the country, mobile shops were said to be taking pagers, walkie-talkies, laptops and cell phones off their shelves, there was a blanket ban on pagers and hand-held radios being taken on aircraft, and people were reportedly replacing their local SIM cards for international versions.

An unnamed Lebanese journalist told the UK’s LBC news site that “Everything seems like a danger at this point, and no one knows what to do. We’re all really scared; there is no safe place anymore.”

Another journalist, Hassan Harfoush, wrote in the MailOnline: “Everyone knows what these explosions can do.” He then went into gruesome description of the injuries he had witnessed, which did nothing to reduce the concern being expressed by the local population.

Hezbollah and the Lebanese government have blamed Israel for the explosions, which came only two days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised that he would do whatever it took to allow Israelis driven from their homes by Hezbollah to return. Although Jerusalem has yet to comment on the explosive attacks, a spokesperson said on Wednesday that “a new phase of war” has begun.