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Charred Pager From the September 2024 Attack

Photograph of the charred and broken remains of a pager device resting on a wooden table

What This Image Shows

This is the photograph that circulated worldwide after September 17 and 18, 2024: the charred, broken remains of a pager on a wooden table. It is a news photograph of the operation nicknamed Operation Grim Beeper, in which thousands of pagers and hundreds of walkie-talkies carried by Hezbollah members detonated almost simultaneously across Lebanon and Syria.

Mainstream reporting attributed the operation to Mossad and described charges of the plastic explosive PETN embedded in the devices during manufacture, through the supply chain of the Taiwanese maker Gold Apollo. Those are the reported facts of a documented foreign event.

This image is used on five pages of this site because it anchors a capability argument: that if a battery compartment can be turned into a weapon, a body-worn transmitter is at least worth examining — which connects it to the exploding-microphone theory in the Kirk case. That is an argument about what is technically possible. It is not evidence that any such device was used at Utah Valley University, and no agency has said one was.

See Beepers, Operation Grim Beeper, PETN, Hezbollah, and Mossad.

Where This Image Appears

This image is used on the following investigation pages: