The batteries of the walkie-talkies used by Lebanese armed group Hezbollah that blew up this week were laced with a highly explosive compound known as PETN, a Lebanese source familiar with the device’s components told Reuters.
The way the explosive material was integrated into the battery pack made it extremely difficult to detect, the source said.
Hundreds of walkie-talkies used by the group exploded on Wednesday, a day after thousands of Hezbollah’s pagers detonated across the group’s strongholds in Lebanon.
The Lebanese source said explosions had occurred even in cases where the battery pack was separated from the rest of the device.
I cannot help but be morbidly impressed with this operation being carried out. Don’t get me wrong, it was absolutely morally reprehensible, but this is James Bond villain-level stuff.
It basically is the plot of Kingsman.
there wasn’t one point where any of these devices passed a bomb dog?
I don’t know what sort of batteries you use, but the ones in my devices tend to be hermetically sealed. Otherwise they become spicy pillows.
You think a bunch of Hamas guys are in the habit of hanging around bomb sniffing dogs?
That’s like asking why Snoop Dogg wasn’t caught by the drug dog.
Hezbollah*
bro please google words before you use them
Ok, new acronym … I Am Not A Bomb Expert (IANABE) but this is just a somewhat explosive-noob educated guess …
PETN can be mixed with a plasticizer and RDX to make a plastic explosive (or possibly a plastic casing that would surround a battery pack???)
As it has been reported that some of the battery packs exploded even when they had been removed from the device, there must have been an igniter in the battery pack as well (engaged by a radio signal vs a software signal???)
PETN has a high shattering effect (which may be why it was chosen to shatter a battery pack???)
Everything in parentheses with ??? means a guess … because, again, IANABE.
edit to add - how many explosve-trained dogs do you think walk around Lebanon, just checking out the scenery?
this is completely me guessing but like, they have to have regular airport security, otherwise other nations wouldn’t be letting airplanes from their country enter their airspace, right? that would mean bomb dogs at the very least. unless they don’t have any international airports?
it’s just, so many devices. surely one of them would have crossed paths
I don’t know what their accuracy is, but unless someone noticed it happening a lot, they probably would have passed it off as a false positive because they trusted the pagers.
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