Thousands of walkie talkies used by Hezbollah fighters have detonated across Lebanon, killing nine and wounding hundreds of people including mourners at a funeral, witnesses and security sources have reported.
The second wave of carnage comes a day after thousands of exploding pagers used by the group left almost 3,000 people injured and a dozen dead, including civilians and children.
Security sources have now confirmed that hand-held radios were purchased by Hezbollah five months ago, at around the same time as the compromised pagers. Lebanese media has also reported that home solar energy systems have blown up in several areas of Beirut.
The latest explosions this afternoon have hit the country’s south and the capital Beirut, where dramatic time-lapse video shows multiple plumes of smoke rising above the skyline in different locations almost simultaneously.
Multiple explosions occurred at the site of a funeral for three Hezbollah members and a child killed by exploding pagers the day before, according to reports.
The attacks amount to the biggest security breach in Hezbollah’s history, with the group and its backers Iran condemning Israel and labelling it ‘mass murder’.
Beirut’s hospitals are reportedly still at full capacity following yesterday’s attacks, with aid being rapidly diverted to the already crippled country amid the catastrophe.
The repetition of the clandestine attacks, which Israel has not taken responsibility for, will raise already spiking tensions in the region to fever pitch, with Lebanon’s foreign minister today warning that the blasts are an omen of a widening war.
United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres warned this afternoon that the strikes could be a precursor to a bigger confrontation between Israel and Lebanon.
‘The logic of making all these devices explode is to do it as a pre-emptive strike before a major military operation,’ he said.
‘These events confirm that there is a serious risk of a dramatic escalation in Lebanon and everything must be done to avoid that escalation.’
It has been alleged that Mossad, working in collaboration with Israel’s Defence Forces (IDF), was behind yesterday’s pager attacks, with Hezbollah officials already laying blame for the latest attacks with Israel.
Officials in Jerusalem have thus far declined to comment on yesterday’s pager blasts, but Axios reports that two sources ‘with knowledge of the operation’ confirmed Israel’s involvement.
The unnamed sources allege that the walkie-talkies were booby-trapped in advance by Israeli intelligence and then delivered to Hezbollah as part of its emergency communications system, which the group had planned to use during a war with Israel.
As well as security sources, weapons experts and regional analysts have also suggested that Israeli intelligence would have been capable of staging the pager attacks.
It has been widely theorised that intelligence services could have infiltrated the supply chain to plant a small quantity of high explosives within the pagers before they were delivered to Lebanon in the spring.
These rigged devices were subsequently distributed to thousands of unsuspecting members across the political, military, operational and medical branches of Hezbollah before they were eventually detonated on Tuesday afternoon.
The death toll rose to 12, including two children, according to the Lebanese health ministry, while nearly 3,000 people were injured, including many of the militant group’s fighters and Iran’s envoy to Beirut.
A Taiwanese pager maker denied that it had produced the pager devices which exploded in the audacious attack.
Gold Apollo said the devices were made by under licence by a company called BAC, based in Hungary’s capital Budapest.
Hezbollah has vowed to retaliate against Israel, whose military declined to comment on the blasts.
Earlier today, the group said it had attacked Israeli artillery positions with rockets in the first strike at its arch-foe since the pager blasts.
The two sides have been engaged in cross-border warfare since the Gaza conflict erupted last October, fuelling fears of a wider Middle East conflict that could drag in the United States and Iran.
Jordan’s Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi accused Israel of pushing the Middle East to the brink of a regional war by orchestrating a dangerous escalation on many fronts.
‘Hezbollah wants to avoid an all-out war. It still wants to avoid one. But given the scale, the impact on families, on civilians, there will be pressure for a stronger response,’ said Mohanad Hage Ali of the Carnegie Middle East Center.
Hezbollah, Iran’s most powerful proxy in the Middle East, said in a statement earlier today that it would continue to support Hamas in Gaza and Israel should await a response to the pager ‘massacre’ which left fighters and others bloodied, hospitalised or dead.
Dozens of victims sustained severe facial injuries, with doctors explaining how they were forced to cut out victims’ eyeballs.
Others had their hands blown off, or suffered gaping wounds in their abdomen had they concealed the pager on their hip.
Professor Elias Warrak, an ophthalmologist at Mount Lebanon University Hospital in Beirut, told the BBC he had never had to remove so many eyes in his 25-year-career, describing the experience as a ‘nightmare’.
‘Most of the patients were young men in their twenties and in some cases I had to remove both eyes,’ he said, adding that he operated until 4am Wednesday morning and still had more patients to treat when he returned a few hours later.
At least 12 people are confirmed dead, including at least two children – one girl aged eight and an 11-year-old boy – according to Lebanese Health Minister Firas Abiad.
The Iranian Red Crescent said on Wednesday it had dispatched ‘rescue teams and eye surgeons’ to Lebanon to treat the wounded.
Iranian Foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani said in a statement that he ‘condemned the terrorist act of the Zionist regime’, referring to Israel.
Since yesterday’s attack, the IDF revealed this morning that it had struck a number of Hezbollah targets across southern Lebanon, with video showing an aerial raid on one alleged terrorist hideout.
‘Closing a circle from the air, fighter jets attacked the building where the terrorists were operating,’ the IDF said in a statement.
‘In addition, warplanes attacked the organization’s military buildings in five different areas in southern Lebanon.’
The Israeli military added in a statement this morning that it would ‘continue to operate against the threat of the Hezbollah terrorist organization in order to defend the State of Israel.’
WHAT ARE HEZBOLLAH’S ORIGINS?
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards founded Hezbollah in 1982 during Lebanon’s 1975-90 civil war, part of Tehran’s effort to export its 1979 Islamic Revolution and fight Israeli forces that had invaded Lebanon in 1982. The group has risen from a shadowy faction to a heavily armed force with big sway in Lebanon and the region. Western governments including the United States designate it a terrorist group. So do Sunni Muslim Gulf Arab states including Saudi Arabia.
Hezbollah is a Shi’ite Islamist group and shares the ideology of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
HOW DID HEZBOLLAH GET INVOLVED IN THE GAZA WAR?
Hezbollah is a powerful part of the ‘Axis of Resistance’, an alliance of Iran-backed groups across the Middle East that also includes the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, which ignited the Gaza war by attacking Israel on Oct. 7. Declaring solidarity with the Palestinians, Hezbollah began firing on Israeli positions in the frontier region on Oct. 8. The sides have been trading fire on a near daily basis since then, with Hezbollah launching rockets and drones and Israel mounting air and artillery strikes. The attacks have mostly struck near or at the frontier, but both sides have also widened their attacks.
Tens of thousands have been uprooted in Lebanon and Israel.
HOW POWERFUL IS HEZBOLLAH’S MILITARY?
While other groups disarmed after Lebanon’s civil war, Hezbollah kept its weapons to fight Israeli forces that were occupying the predominantly Shi’ite Muslim south of the country. Years of guerrilla warfare led Israel to withdraw in 2000, but Hezbollah retained its arsenal.
Hezbollah demonstrated military advances in 2006 during a five-week war with Israel, which erupted after it crossed into Israel, kidnapping two soldiers and killing others.
Hezbollah fired thousands of rockets into Israel during the conflict, in which 1,200 people were killed in Lebanon, mostly civilians, and 158 Israelis were killed, most of them soldiers.
Hezbollah’s military power grew after 2006. The group says its rockets can strike all parts of Israel and its arsenal includes precision missiles. During the Gaza war, Hezbollah has announced attacks using surface-to-air missiles – a weapon it was long believed to have in its arsenal but had never before confirmed possessing. It has also launched explosive drones at Israel.
Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah has said the group has 100,000 fighters. The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency’s World Factbook says Hezbollah was estimated in 2022 to have 45,000 fighters, split between roughly 20,000 full-time and 25,000 reservists.
WHAT REGIONAL SWAY DOES HEZBOLLAH HAVE?
Hezbollah has inspired and supported other Iranian-backed groups across the region, including Iraqi Shi’ite militias. It played a big part in helping its ally President Bashar al-Assad fight the war in Syria, where it still has fighters. Saudi Arabia says Hezbollah has also fought in support of the Iran-allied Houthis in Yemen. Hezbollah denies this.
WHAT IS HEZBOLLAH’S ROLE IN LEBANON?
Hezbollah’s influence is underpinned by both its weaponry and the support of many Lebanese Shi’ites who say the group defends Lebanon from Israel. It has ministers in government and lawmakers in parliament.
Lebanese parties opposed to Hezbollah say the group has undermined the state and unilaterally dragged Lebanon into wars.
It entered Lebanese politics in 1992, contesting elections, and began taking a more prominent role in state affairs in 2005 after Syria withdrew forces from Lebanon following the killing of former prime minister Rafik al-Hariri, a Sunni politician who symbolised Saudi influence in Beirut.
A U.N.-backed court convicted three Hezbollah members in absentia over the assassination. Hezbollah denies any role, describing the court as a tool of its enemies.
In 2008, a power struggle between Hezbollah and its Lebanese political foes led to armed conflict, after the government vowed to take action against the group’s military communications network. Hezbollah fighters took over parts of Beirut.
In 2018 Hezbollah and allies who support its possession of arms won a parliamentary majority. This was lost in 2022, but the group still has major political sway.
ACCUSED OF ATTACKS ON WESTERN INTERESTS
Lebanese officials and Western intelligence have said groups linked to Hezbollah carried out suicide attacks on Western embassies and targets, and kidnapped Westerners in the 1980s.
The United States holds Hezbollah responsible for suicide bombings in 1983 that destroyed the U.S. Marine headquarters in Beirut, killing 241 servicemen, and a French barracks, killing 58 French paratroopers. It also says Hezbollah was behind a suicide attack on the U.S. embassy in Beirut in 1983.
Referring to those attacks and hostage-taking, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said in a 2022 interview that they were carried out by small groups not linked to Hezbollah.
Hezbollah has also been accused of militant attacks elsewhere. Argentina blames it and Iran for the deadly bombing of a Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires in which 85 people died in 1994 and for an attack on the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires in 1992 that killed 29 people.
Source: Reuters