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.’
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