At the end of the 2014 film Kingsman: The Secret Service, the plucky spy hero is in trouble deep in an enemy base. Suddenly his tech wizard figures out that he can hack into the microchips inside the enemies’ heads and make them all explode. The bad guys all go boom.
On Tuesday night, the spy thriller trope became real. Across Lebanon, Hezbollah operatives’ secure pagers exploded. Security camera footage showed the small explosions in supermarkets and shops, leaving Hezbollah terror operatives bleeding or worse. More than 3,000 people were injured in the hundreds of blasts, and at least nine were killed, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry. Not all the victims were Hezbollah members: in one case, the young daughter of a Hezbollah operative was playing with his pager when it blew up, killing her. But it seems that the vast majority of injuries hit the intended targets.
According to Saudi TV channel al-Hadath, some 500 Hezbollah members lost their eyesight as a result of the explosions; the pagers rang before they blew up, so many of the owners were holding and looking at them. ….SOURCE
