A Serbian competitor in the CrossFit Games dies during a swimming event at a Texas lake

DALLAS (AP) — A Serbian competitor in the CrossFit Games died while competing in a swimming event Thursday morning at a Texas lake, officials said.

CrossFit CEO Don Faul said during a news conference that they were “deeply saddened” and were working with authorities on the investigation into the death of one of their athletes at Marine Creek Lake in Fort Worth.

The Tarrant County medical examiner’s office identified the athlete as 28-year-old Lazar Dukic of Serbia. The medical examiner’s office had not yet listed his cause of death.

An official with the Fort Worth Fire Department said they were called out around 8 a.m. to assist police because there was “a participant in the water that was down and hadn’t been seen in some point in time.”

Officers who were working the event were told a participant was unaccounted for after last being seen in the water and then not resurfacing, police said.

The Fort Worth fire official said they responded for search and rescue and were not on the scene when the initial call was made.

Faul said CrossFit had a safety plan and did have safety personnel on site at the event. CrossFit did not respond Thursday to an inquiry from The Associated Press seeking more details on that safety plan.

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported the event on Thursday included a 3.5-mile (5.6-kilometer) run followed by an 800-meter (0.5-mile) swim. The newspaper said an estimated 10,000 people were in the area for the games, which began Thursday and were set to run through Sunday.

Kaitlin Pritchard told the newspaper that she was standing by the finish line when she saw Dukic approach. She said he was among swimmers she noticed had changed up their swimming patterns, which she thought could have been because they were tired from the run.

Pritchard saw people she assumed were lifeguards on paddleboards on the lake but didn’t notice any of them jumped in to try to rescue anyone, she said.

“Gauging where the people on the paddleboards were and everything, it’s just that he should have been reachable,” Pritchard told the newspaper.

Dukic played water polo and was an athlete ambassador for FITAID, a sports drink brand, said Gijs Spaans, general manager for FITAID in Europe. Spaans, who knew Dukic for three years, described him as a driven athlete and a “guy who walks into a room and lights up the room.”

“He had an incredible work ethic with his athletics career but, you know, always also made time to speak to people and make time for them," Spaans said. "Just a really, really good dude.”

Spaans was watching a livestream of the swim miles away at the main event site. He was looking for Dukic among the swimmers coming out of the water before realizing he was missing.

“I thought he had this. And then all of a sudden I was thinking, ‘Why is his name not showing up in the finishes?'” Spaans said. “All the race, he was in top five of the race. And all of a sudden I see all these other people coming in. I’m like, 'What’s going on?’”

“He was in it to win it,” Spaans added. “He was a great swimmer.”

The mission of the CrossFit Games, first held in 2007, is to “find the fittest athletes in the world,” the CrossFit website said. It says the games change every year and often the details are not announced until just before the event.

The CrossFit community is like a family, Faul said.

“We’re doing everything in our power during this tragic time to support the family, to support our community,” Faul said.

Dukic's biography on the CrossFit website says he was the third-ranked CrossFit athlete in Serbia and the 88th-ranked worldwide. Dukic finished ninth in his debut in the games in 2021, then eighth the next season and ninth in 2023.

Stengle reported from Dallas and Kelety from Phoenix. AP Sports Writer Pete Iacobelli contributed from Columbia, South Carolina.

Lazar Dukic, of Serbia, 28, died while competing in a CrossFit Games swimming event on Thursday, Aug. 8, 2024, at a lake in Texas. (FITAID via AP)

Lazar Dukic, center, of Serbia, 28, died while competing in a CrossFit Games swimming event on Thursday, Aug. 8, 2024, at a lake in Texas. (FITAID via AP)

Lazar Dukic, of Serbia, 28, died while competing in a CrossFit Games swimming event on Thursday, Aug. 8, 2024, at a lake in Texas. (FITAID via AP)

Lazar Dukic, of Serbia, 28, died while competing in a CrossFit Games swimming event on Thursday, Aug. 8, 2024, at a lake in Texas. (FITAID via AP)

CrossFit CEO Don Faul reacts during a news conference after an athlete drowned during the run swim event in Marine Creek Lake on Thursday, Aug. 8, 2024 in Fort Worth, Texas, (Amanda McCoy

A jet ski pulls in buoys from the CrossFit Games at Marine Creek Lake, where an athlete drowned during the run swim event on Thursday, Aug. 8, 2024 in Fort Worth, Texas, (Amanda McCoy/Star-Telegram via AP)

NEW YORK (AP) — In what appears to be a sophisticated, remote attack, pagers used by hundreds of members of Hezbollah exploded almost simultaneously in Lebanon and Syria Tuesday, killing at least nine people — including an 8-year-old girl — and wounding thousands more.

A U.S. official said Israel briefed the U.S. on the operation — in which small amounts of explosive secreted in the pagers were detonated — on Tuesday after it was concluded. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the information publicly.

The Iran-backed militant group blamed Israel for the deadly explosions, which targeted an extraordinary breadth of people and showed signs of being a long-planned operation. Details on how the attack was executed are largely uncertain and investigators have not immediately said how the pagers were detonated. The Israeli military has declined to comment.

Here's what we know so far.

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah previously warned the group’s members not to carry cellphones, saying they could be used by Israel to track the group's movements. As a result, the organization uses pagers to communicate.

A Hezbollah official told The Associated Press the exploded devices were from a new brand the group had not used before. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the press, did not identify the brand name or supplier.

Taiwanese company Gold Apollo said Wednesday it had authorized use of its brand on the AR-924 pager model and a Budapest, Hungary-based company called BAC Consulting produced and sold the pagers. Further information on BAC wasn't immediately available.

Nicholas Reese, adjunct instructor at the Center for Global Affairs in New York University’s School of Professional Studies, explains smart phones carry a higher risk for intercepted communications in contrast to the simpler technology of pagers.

This type of attack will also force Hezbollah to change their communication strategies, said Reese, who previously worked as an intelligence officer, adding that survivors of Tuesday's explosions are likely to throw away "not just their pagers, but their phones, and leaving their tablets or any other electronic devices.”

Even with a U.S. official confirming it was a planned operation by Israel, multiple theories have emerged Tuesday around how the attack might have been carried out. Several experts who spoke with The Associated Press explained how the explosions were most likely the result of supply-chain interference.

Very small explosive devices may have been built into the pagers prior to their delivery to Hezbollah, and then all remotely triggered simultaneously, possibly with a radio signal.

By the time of the attack, “the battery was probably half-explosive and half-actual battery," said Carlos Perez, director of security intelligence at TrustedSec.

A former British Army bomb disposal officer explained that an explosive device has five main components: A container, a battery, a triggering device, a detonator and an explosive charge.

“A pager has three of those already,” explained the ex-officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he now works as a consultant with clients on the Middle East. “You would only need to add the detonator and the charge.”

After security camera footage appeared on social media Tuesday purporting to show one of the pagers explode on a man’s hip in a Lebanese market, two munitions experts offered opinions that corroborate the U.S. official's statement that the blast appeared to be the result of a tiny explosive device.

“Looking at the video, the size of the detonation is similar to that caused by an electric detonator alone or one that incorporates an extremely small, high-explosive charge,” said Sean Moorhouse, a former British Army officer and explosive ordinance disposal expert.

This signals involvement of a state actor, Moorhouse said. He adds that Israel’s foreign intelligence agency, the Mossad, is the most obvious suspect to have the resources to carry out such an attack.

N.R. Jenzen-Jones, an expert in military arms who is director of the Australian-based Armament Research Services, notes that Israel had been accused of carrying out similar operations in the past. Last year, AP reported that Iran accused Israel of trying to sabotage its ballistic missile program through faulty foreign parts that could explode, damaging or destroying the weapons before they could be used.

It would take a long time to plan an attack of this scale. The exact specifics are still unknown, but experts who spoke with the AP shared estimates ranging anywhere between several months to two years.

The sophistication of the attack suggests that the culprit has been collecting intelligence for a long time, Reese explained. An attack of this caliber requires building the relationships needed to gain physical access to the pagers before they were sold; developing the technology that would be embedded in the devices; and developing sources who can confirm that the targets were carrying the pagers.

And it's likely the compromised pagers seemed normal to their users for some time before the attack. Elijah J. Magnier, a Brussels-based veteran and a senior political risk analyst with over 37 years experience in the region, said he has had conversations with members of Hezbollah and survivors of Tuesday's pager attack. He said the pagers were procured more than six months ago.

“The pagers functioned perfectly for six months," Magnier said. What triggered the explosion, he said, appeared to be an error message sent to all the devices.

Based on his conversations with Hezbollah members, Magnier also said that many pagers didn’t go off, allowing the group to inspect them. They came to the conclusion that between 3 to 5 grams of a highly explosive material were concealed or embedded in the circuitry, he said.

Jenzen-Jones also adds that “such a large-scale operation also raises questions of targeting" — stressing the number of causalities and enormous impact reported so far.

“How can the party initiating the explosive be sure that a target’s child, for example, is not playing with the pager at the time it functions?” he said.

Hezbollah issued a statement confirming at least two members were killed in the bombings. One of them was the son of a Hezbollah member in parliament, according to the Hezbollah official who spoke anonymously. The group later issued announcements that six other members were killed Tuesday, though it did not specify how.

“We hold the Israeli enemy fully responsible for this criminal aggression that also targeted civilians,” Hezbollah said, adding that Israel will “for sure get its just punishment.”

Associated Press journalist Johnson Lai in Taipei

People donate blood for those who were injured by their exploded handheld pagers, at a Red Cross center, in the southern port city of Sidon, Lebanon, Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Mohammed Zaatari)