On September 17, a Syrian military intelligence branch fired off an urgent dispatch with troubling news: According to a local source, pagers used by the Syrian government’s ally Hezbollah had exploded in Lebanon.
As the day unfolded, the messages kept coming. As officers struggled to gather intelligence, they relied on rumors and outdated information to make sense of the situation.
One memo cited a report that the same pagers had been used at the American University of Beirut, but had been withdrawn 10 days earlier. Another speculated that the devices were linked to Motorola, which it said had held a stake in an Israeli communications firm. (Neither turned out to be true.)
When another round of communication devices — this time, walkie-talkies — exploded the next day, the tone of the messages took on a new gravity.
In one memo, marked “top secret,” Major General Munther Saad Ibrahim, the head of the “operations authority” of the General Command of the Army and Armed Forces, urged Syria’s intelligence agencies to “keep all wireless communication devices away from the leaders.”
“If necessary, the radios should be kept at a safe distance,” the memo read. “Use only when necessary.”
The communications were found by OCCRP’s partner Daraj.com among a trove of documents in the offices of Syria’s Branch 235, known as the “Palestine Branch,” after the fall of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime in December.
The 137-page file comprised confidential cables, many of which were sent by Branch 227, a U.S.-sanctioned military intelligence office in charge of the capital Damascus.
A 137-page file found in December 2024 at a security branch office in Damascus.
The memos show Syria’s intelligence services scrambling to make sense of Israel’s covert operation against Hezbollah, an Iran-backed militia which was a key ally of the Assad regime over more than a decade of civil war. Many others demonstrate the tight coordination between Assad’s widely feared intelligence services with the group, often referred to as “friends” or “Lebanese friends” in the messages.
More than 100 wounded people, including civilians, were transferred to Syria for treatment after the attacks, the messages show. Strict security protocols were put in place at a major military hospital in Damascus, where many patients were treated.
“The cooperation between Hezbollah and Syrian security forces was very strategic,” Fadel Abdulghany, founder and head of the Syrian Network for Human Rights, told OCCRP.
But while the Assad regime was known to work together closely with Hezbollah on intelligence gathering, battlefield coordination, and running detention facilities, the specifics of the coordination in the wake of the pager attacks had not been known, he said.
The pager attacks were a prelude to a series of crushing attacks by Israel that left Hezbollah’s top leadership decimated, and ultimately fueled the collapse of the Assad regime less than three months later.
Medical Transfers
By early morning on September 18, the communications show, a dozen Hezbollah members and civilians wounded in the explosions had been transferred to Syria for treatment. They were the first of what would become a long list.
Over the next two days, ambulances continued to cross from Lebanon via Syria’s Jdeidet Yabous, a village near the border, about 45 kilometers west of Damascus. Almost 100 wounded people were transported into the country on September 19 and 20, the messages show.
Road between the Lebanese-Syrian border and Damascus.
The messages indicate that some of those transferred from Lebanon were Hezbollah personnel, but their identities are not revealed in the communications.
The messages say that some people were transported by ambulances from Lebanon’s Civil Defense, though the directorate denied to Daraj that it was involved in the transfers. Ambulances run by the Syrian Arab Red Crescent transported some patients, as did vehicles from Hezbollah’s Islamic Health Association, the memos show.
Contacted by reporters, the Syrian Arab Red Crescent said it had transported a number of wounded, but that the people they transferred were unarmed. In keeping with a general policy of assisting people without discrimination, they were not asked about their identities or affiliations, the organization said.
Around 120 people had been transferred to Syria by September 22, including a nine-year-old child and an 11-year-old child, the communications show. Wounds to the eyes, chest, limbs, jaw, face, and abdomen were recorded.
Security Measures
Around midnight on the night between September 19 and 20, a Branch 227 patrol arrived at the Tishreen Military Hospital in Damascus, where many of the wounded had been taken. Strict security protocols were put in place.
“Do not take the names of the wounded at the main door, but rather in the emergency department,” one message read.
Another memo said that only visitors approved by Hezbollah, Syrian intelligence, and the Iranian embassy were allowed to enter. Some cables suggested that the information should be copied to the “liaison officer” of the “friends.”
In one memo, dated October 2, Branch 227 said it had stepped up its security presence at the Tishreen hospital and were searching and checking everyone entering the hospital. They also recorded the names of the visitors to the “wounded friends” in coordination with their representatives.
Joseph Daher, a researcher and author on the Middle East, said those security fears were well justified. Israel had launched multiple attacks on Syrian territory throughout the year, and stepped up its strikes on Hezbollah and Iranians inside Syria between the summer and the ceasefire agreement with Lebanon in November.
A pager that exploded in Beirut, Lebanon.
Those hazards could help account for the fact that the number of medical transfers into Syria was relatively small compared to thousands wounded in the attacks.
“For the Hezbollah officials, soldiers, and other members seeking refuge, Syria was less and less of an option — or at least remained a danger,” Daher said.
In the weeks after the pager attacks, Syrian intelligence sent messages closely monitoring the ongoing Israeli air strikes in Lebanon, including the reported death tolls and the types of aircraft used.
The last communication in the files comes on December 1, noting the transfer of a “martyr” from Lebanon to Syria.
A week later, Syrian rebels were able to storm across the country and enter Damascus, putting an end to over a half-century of Assad family rule.
