Hezbollah has relied heavily on pagers as a low-tech means of communications to try to evade location-tracking by Israel.

A pager is a wireless telecommunications device that receives and displays alphanumeric or voice messages.

Mobile phones have long since been abandoned as simply too vulnerable, as Israel’s assassination of the Hamas bomb-maker Yahya Ayyash demonstrated as long ago as 1996, when his phone exploded in his hand.

But one Hezbollah operative told the AP news agency that the pagers were a new brand that the group had not used before.

Emily Harding, an ex-analyst with the CIA, said the security breach was deeply embarrassing to Hezbollah.

"A breach of this magnitude is not only physically harmful, but will also make them question their entire security apparatus," she told the BBC.

"I would expect to see them conduct an intensive internal investigation that will distract them from a potential fight with Israel."

A source close to Hezbollah told AFP that two of those killed were the sons of two Hezbollah MPs. They also said the daughter of a Hezbollah member was killed.

Among the injured was Iran's ambassador to Lebanon, Mojtaba Amani. Reports in Iranian media said his injuries were minor.

Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah was not hurt in the explosions, Reuters reported quoting a source.

Lebanese Public Health Minister Firass Abiad said damage to the hands and face made up the majority of injuries.

Speaking to the BBC's Newshour programme, he said: "Most of the injuries appear to be to the face and especially to the eyes and also the hand with some amputations, whether it's in the hands or the fingers, and some of them have injuries to their flank."

He added: "The vast majority of the people who are presenting to the emergency rooms are in civilian clothes, so it's very difficult to discern whether they belong to a certain entity like Hezbollah or others...

"But we are seeing among them people who are old or people who are very young, like the child who unfortunately died... and there are some of them who are healthcare workers," the minister said.

Outside of Lebanon, 14 people were injured in similar blasts in neighbouring Syria, according to UK-based campaign group the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Analysts have been quick to express shock at the scale of Tuesday's attack - saying Hezbollah prides itself on its security measures.

Some suggested a hack may have caused the pager batteries to overheat, causing the devices to explode. Such an act would be unprecedented.

But many experts say that is unlikely, with footage of the explosions inconsistent with the batteries overheating.

Some analysts say instead that some sort of supply chain attack, which involved the pagers being tampered with during their manufacture or in transit, was more likely.

Supply chain attacks are a growing concern in the cyber security world with many high-profile incidents recently caused by hackers gaining access to products whilst they are in development.

But these attacks are normally contained to software. Hardware supply chain attacks are far rarer as they involve getting hands on to the device.

If this was indeed a supply chain attack it would have involved a huge operation to secretly tamper with the pagers in some way.

A former British Army munitions expert, who asked not to be named, told the BBC the devices could have been packed with between 10 to 20 grams each of military-grade high explosive, hidden inside a fake electronic component.

This, said the expert, would have been armed by a signal, something called an alphanumeric text message