Israel's pager explosion attack on Hezbollah members will likely have "several negative effects" on the militant group and its operations, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) has said.
Pagers used by hundreds of Hezbollah members exploded near-simultaneously in Lebanon and Syria on Tuesday, killing nine people, including an eight-year-old girl, and wounding around 2,750, according to Lebanon's health minister Firas Abiad.
Hezbollah has blamed Israel and vowed to retaliate—Israel has refused to comment.
In an update on Tuesday, the ISW said "the attack likely disrupted some internal communications across Hezbollah, especially given the extent to which Hezbollah has been relying on pagers in recent months."
In a televised speech in February, Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah told its members that their phones were more dangerous than Israeli spies, telling them to break, bury or lock their phones in an iron box.
Instead, the group opted to distribute pagers to Hezbollah members across the group's various branches.
The BBC reports that Hezbollah has been using pagers as a low-tech means of communication to try to evade location-tracking by Israel, with cell phones being deemed as vulnerable. For example, in 1996 Hamas bomb-maker Yahya Ayyash was killed when his phone exploded in his hand.
"The nature and scale of the attack also likely stoked confusion and shock among some Hezbollah members," the ISW said, referring to Tuesday's attack. "These effects could drive general paranoia within Hezbollah as well, given that Israel has demonstrated repeatedly in recent months how deeply it has infiltrated Iranian and Iranian-backed networks."
The Iranian ambassador to Lebanon, Mojtaba Amani, was one of the people injured in the attack.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani has called it "an example of mass murder."
Hezbollah will have to operate with fewer fighters now—at least temporarily—with 200 of the wounded classed as critical and many struggling with facial, hand or abdominal injuries.
Israel is believed to have carried out the operation by infiltrating the supply chain of the pagers.
The devices were branded with Taiwanese electronics manufacturer Gold Apollo's label but founder Hsu Ching-kuang said "the design and manufacturing of the products are solely the responsibility" of a Budapest–based company called BAC Consulting. Newsweek has contacted BAC Consulting, via LinkedIn, for comment.
The attack comes as northern Israel, which shares a border with Lebanon, has been included in Israel's stated war objectives for the first time since the current conflict began on October 7 last year.
Israel's security Cabinet approved "returning the residents of the north securely to their homes" as an official objective on Monday.
A few days before, on September 12, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said a political statement alone would not achieve this, adding that Israel is "preparing for a broad campaign."
About 60,000 people have had to leave their homes in northern Israel because of Hezbollah attacks, according to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
Hezbollah's attacks on the border have long been seen as a way to keep Israel under pressure on multiple fronts and to help Hamas in Gaza.
Hezbollah launched attacks on Israeli military targets on October 8, provoking a series of cross-border strikes and stoking fears of escalation in the region.
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