BEIRUT –
The batteries of the walkie-talkies utilized by Lebanese armed group Hezbollah that blew up this week had been laced with a extremely explosive compound often known as PETN, a Lebanese supply acquainted with the gadget’s elements advised Reuters.
The way in which the explosive materials was built-in into the battery pack made it extraordinarily troublesome to detect, the supply mentioned.
A whole bunch of walkie-talkies utilized by the group exploded on Wednesday, a day after 1000’s of Hezbollah’s pagers detonated throughout the group’s strongholds in Lebanon.
Footage of the walkie-talkies that had exploded confirmed labels studying “ICOM” and “made in Japan.” Icom has mentioned it halted manufacturing a decade in the past of the radio fashions recognized within the assault, and that the majority of these nonetheless on sale had been counterfeit.
Yoshiki Enomoto, the final supervisor of Icom’s safety and commerce division, advised Reuters it was doable that an older Icom gadget had been modified to make a bomb.
It could be troublesome to insert an explosive gadget into the primary compartment of the walkie-talkie as a result of its electronics are tightly packed, so it was extra more likely to have been within the removable battery pack, Enomoto advised the Japanese broadcaster Fuji TV.
The Lebanese supply mentioned explosions had occurred even in instances the place the battery pack was separated from the remainder of the gadget.
A Lebanese safety supply had earlier advised Reuters that the pagers had been implanted with explosives that had been troublesome to detect. One other safety supply advised Reuters that as much as three grams (0.11 ounce) of explosives had been hidden within the new pagers, apparently months earlier than the blasts.
(Reporting by Maya Gebeily; Extra reporting by Tim Kelly in Tokyo; Enhancing by Elaine Hardcastle and Kevin Liffey)