The recent surge in Middle East conflict has sparked safety fears over potentially explosive devices at a major airline, leading to a comprehensive ban on pagers and walkie talkies. Emirates Airlines, in announcing the ban, stated that these devices would be seized from travellers by police.

On September 17, Israel marked the start of a new phase in their ongoing Gaza war, by simultaneously detonating thousands of pagers and walkie talkies across neighbouring Lebanon. The assault exposed that their intelligence service had embedded remote-controlled explosives in tens of thousand of handheld devices, causing 42 deaths and injuring over 3000. Express News reports.