Every single pager Israel used was personally dedicated, i.e. the Israelis knew the whereabouts of the person carrying it and ensured that no one else was harmed. In that case, it’s an incredible intelligence operation, especially when you realise that thousands of them have been produced.

Each of the pagers that exploded at the homes of their Hezbollah owners across Lebanon on Tuesday, injuring thousands of the terror group’s operatives, was detonated individually, and the attackers knew who was the target, where they were located and whether others were nearby, according to a TV report Saturday night.

“Each pager had its own arrangements. This made it possible to control who was hit and who wasn’t,” the report quoted an unnamed foreign security source as saying.

“They knew who he was with and where he was so that the greengrocer in the supermarket wouldn’t get hurt” when the pager of a man next to him exploded, the source said, referring to footage of the explosions in which a man was apparently blown up by his pager next to a fruit and vegetable stand.

At least 30 people were killed in the blast.

At least 30 people were killed and thousands wounded when pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah operatives exploded across Lebanon on Tuesday and Wednesday, in a coordinated attack for which Israel received much of the blame after months of cross-border shooting.