This is the moment a booby-trapped Hezbollah pager received a deadly message that sparked explosions across the Middle East.
For over an hour today, wireless communication devices carried by Hezbollah fighters detonated unexpectedly.
Nine people have been confirmed dead, including two children.
More than 2,750 people were injured across Lebanon, with more than 200 people in a critical condition.
Widespread panic and chaotic scenes were seen across Beirut’s southern suburbs, the Bekaa Valley and southern Lebanon, while in neighbouring Syria 14 people were injured by the blasts, according to Britain-based war monitor the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Hezbollah’s low-tech solution to Israeli eavesdropping was meant to provide the terror group with a clean and simple way to carry out its work.
But the pagers, not seen in popular use since the 1980s, were the terror group’s undoing.
It’s not currently clear exactly how the explosions happened. Two main theories are being bandied about by security experts. Some believe Israel, through its shadow Mossad intelligence agency, managed to send out a mass cyberattack that overheated the lithium ion batteries of the pagers.
Others believe Mossad was able to slip into Hezbollah’s supply chain, sneaking explosive material into the pagers as they were manufactured, which would later be triggered by a mass message to the devices.
Video footage from inside a Beirut supermarket appears to show the moment Israel sent out its deadly message.
A Hezbollah attacker was seen confusedly lifting his shirt up at a supermarket after getting a message on his pager, which lit up.
He stared at it for a second before it detonated, collapsing him in an instant as supermarket workers and fellow shoppers panicked and fled.
Though Israel may have intended to take out Hezbollah fighters, nearly 3,000 people, many of whom are civilians, were grievously injured in the spate of explosions.
Harrowing video footage taken inside medical institutes in the country’s capital, Beirut, has revealed the severe consequences of the simultaneous explosions, which Hezbollah and Lebanon’s government have blamed Israel for.
One horrifying video opened with a man, covered head to toe in his own blood, with four of his fingers and his right eye missing. The video then pans over to another man sitting in a wheelchair with several fingers missing and blood across his face.
The video then shows a man lying on a gurney with a large chunk of his abdomen missing, before showing a man carrying an unconscious child through the hospital.
Another video showed patients writhing on the floor in agony as medical staff try desperately to treat them.
White bandages can be seen wrapped around the limbs of people inside a hospital, with doctors’ white coats covered in blood as they try to get through the throng of people inside the medical institution.
Men, women and children can be heard howling in agony, while doctors and nurses try to shout over the noise to communicate with each other.
One man, barely conscious, was seen being carried by two others through the hospital, as paramedics bring through another set of patients to treat.
Lebanon’s National News Agency (NNA) said people ‘have been taken to hospital after the handheld pagers system was detonated using advanced technology’ and relayed urgent calls from hospitals in the country’s south for people to donate blood.
At Mt. Lebanon hospital, a Reuters reporter saw motorcycles rushing to the emergency room, where people with their hands bloodied were screaming in pain.
Similar scenes were captured by photographers outside the American University of Beirut Medical Centre.
The head of the Nabatieh public hospital in the south of the country, Hassan Wazni, told Reuters that around 40 wounded people were being treated at his facility. The wounds included injuries to the face, eyes and limbs.
Lebanon’s crisis operations centre, which is run by the health ministry, asked all medical workers to head to their respective hospitals to help cope with the massive numbers of wounded coming in for urgent care.
It also stressed that health care workers should not use pagers.
The Lebanese Red Cross said more than 50 ambulances and 300 emergency medical staff were dispatched to help in the evacuation of victims.
Lebanese citizens have begun donating blood in their droves, with pop-up blood drives being seen near Beirut’s main hospitals.
Hezbollah says that Israel is ‘fully responsible’ for the simultaneous explosion, warning that the nation would be punished.
‘We hold the Israeli enemy fully responsible for this criminal aggression,’ the group said in a statement, adding that Israel ‘will certainly receive its just punishment for this sinful aggression’.
Israel have not directly commented on the incident, but wared its citizens to be ‘alert and vigilant’ after Hezbollah vowed retaliation.
‘The Chief of the General Staff Herzi Halevi held a situational assessment this evening with the participation of the General Staff Forum, focusing on readiness in both offence and defence in all arenas,’ the military said in a statement.
‘At this time there is no change to the Home Front Command defensive guidelines. The public is asked to remain alert and vigilant, and any change in policy will be updated immediately.’
The terror group said in a second statement: ‘After examining all the facts, current data, and available information about the sinful attack that took place this afternoon, we hold the Israeli enemy fully responsible for this criminal aggression that targeted civilians too.’
It added it would continue to support ‘Palestinian resistance’ and that the ‘treacherous and criminal enemy will certainly be punished for this aggressive act.’
The Lebanese government, meanwhile, condemned the pager explosions as ‘criminal Israeli aggression.’
Prime Minister Najib Mikati said in a cabinet meeting today, following the incidents, that the attack was ‘criminal Israeli aggression, which constitutes a serious violation of Lebanese sovereignty and a crime by all standards.’
Information minister Ziad Makary said the government has contacted the United Nations to ‘hold them accountable for this continuing crime.’
And Hamas has reaffirmed their ‘full solidarity’ with Hezbollah in a statement. They said: ‘We appreciate the struggle and sacrifices of our brothers in Hezbollah and their insistence on continuing to support and back our Palestinian people in Gaza, and we affirm our full solidarity with the Lebanese people and our brothers in Hezbollah.’
UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric has described the developments across Lebanon as ‘extremely concerning’, adding: ‘We deplore the civilian casualties that we have seen. We cannot underscore enough the risks of escalation in Lebanon and in the region.’
The United Nations’ special coordinator for Lebanon, Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, sad today she ‘deplores today’s attack.’
She added that ‘all concerned actors’ ought to ‘refrain from any further action, or bellicose rhetoric, which could trigger a wider conflagration that nobody can afford.’
Lebanon’s health minister Firas Abiad told the BBC tonight that most of the injuries suffered were to people’s hands and faces.
Most ‘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,’ he said adding that the ‘vast majority’ of people in Lebanon’s emergency rooms were in civilian clothing.
Though this does not necessarily mean they are not Hezbollah, he admitted it made it ‘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 health care workers.’
The shocking incident constitutes the single largest intelligence breach in the militant outfit’s history, an official said, with speculation mounting that the technology was somehow hacked or sabotaged by Israeli security services.
One source close to Hezbollah told AFP the incident came as a direct result of an ‘Israeli breach’ of its communications.
A different official told AP on condition of anonymity that the cause of the explosions was likely the lithium batteries that power the pagers, which can catch on fire when overheated.
‘Pagers belonging to employees of various Hezbollah units and institutions exploded,’ an official statement from the Iran-backed militant group said, adding that the blasts ‘killed a girl and two of our brothers’.
Earlier this year, Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah urged members of his organisation to revert to using a new brand of pagers for vital communications, reasoning that modern smartphones would be more susceptible to cyber attacks by Israeli forces.
The US has denied involvement in the attack, with State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller telling reporters that the US was investigating the incident.
Edward Snowden, infamous for leaking classified material from the US’ National Security Agency, said he believed the incident was ‘not a hack.’
‘As information comes in about the exploding beepers in Lebanon, it seems now more likely than not to be implanted explosives, not a hack’, he said on X.
He added: ‘Why? Too many consistent, very serious injuries. If it were overheated batteries exploding, you’d expect many more small fires & misfires.’
The incident comes at a time of heightened tensions between Lebanon and Israel. The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and Israeli forces have been clashing near-daily for more than 11 months against the backdrop of war between Israel and Hezbollah ally Hamas in Gaza.
The clashes have killed hundreds in Lebanon and dozens in Israel and displaced tens of thousands on both sides of the border. On Tuesday, Israel said that halting Hezbollah’s attacks in the north to allow residents to return to their homes is now an official war goal.
Israel has killed Hamas militants in the past with booby trapped cellphones and it’s widely believed to have been behind the Stuxnet computer virus attack on Iran’s nuclear program in 2010.
Hamas, which has close ties to Hezbollah, has condemned the wave of pager explosions, saying in a statement: ‘We appreciate the struggle and sacrifices of our brothers in Hezbollah, and their insistence on continuing to support and back our Palestinian people in Gaza, and we affirm our full solidarity with the Lebanese people and our brothers in Hezbollah.’
The sudden explosions across southern Lebanon this afternoon come hours after an Israeli strike on Lebanon killed three people, the health ministry said.
Israeli forces have traded near-daily fire with the Iran-backed Lebanese group since its ally Hamas launched the October 7 attacks on Israel, triggering the war in Gaza.
The health ministry said an ‘Israeli enemy strike’ on the border village of Blida killed ‘three people and wounded two’, without specifying if they were fighters or civilians.
Israel’s military said its air force ‘eliminated three terrorists’ from Hezbollah who were at a ‘terrorist infrastructure site’ in the Blida area.
Hezbollah did not immediately announce any fighters had been killed, but claimed a series of attacks on Israeli troops and positions near the border on Tuesday.
The NNA reported several Israeli attacks in the south of the country.
The latest deaths came hours after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said the political-security cabinet had ‘updated the goals of the war’ to include ‘the safe return of the residents of the north to their homes’.
Almost a year of cross-border violence has displaced tens of thousands of people on both sides of the border.
Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said on Monday that ‘military action’ was the ‘only way left to ensure the return of Israel’s northern communities’.
The violence has killed some 627 people in Lebanon, including at least 141 civilians.
On the Israeli side, including in the annexed Golan Heights, authorities have announced the deaths of at least 24 soldiers and 26 civilians.
Hezbollah has repeatedly said that only a ceasefire in Gaza will put an end to its attacks, and diplomatic activity in recent months has sought to avert all-out war.