9 dead, 2,800 injured in pager blasts in Lebanon, Hezbollah blames Israel

BEIRUT: At least nine people were killed and 2,800 others, including Hezbollah fighters and medics were injured on Tuesday when the pagers they use to communicate exploded across Lebanon, security sources and the Lebanese Health Minister said.

Lebanon’s Information Minister Ziad Makary said the government condemned the detonation of the pagers as an “Israeli aggression”. Hezbollah also blamed Israel for the pager blasts and said it would receive “its fair punishment”.

A Hezbollah official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the detonation of the pagers was the “biggest security breach” the group had been subjected to in nearly a year of conflict with Israel.

Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah have been engaged in cross-border warfare since the Gaza war erupted last October, in the worst such escalation in years.

Hezbollah confirmed in a statement the deaths of at least three people, including two of its fighters. The third person killed was a girl, it said, adding that an investigation was being conducted into the causes of the blasts.

Hezbollah Chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah was not hurt in the explosions, the group said.

The wave of explosions lasted around an hour after the initial detonations, which took place about 3:45 p.m. local time. It was not immediately clear how the devices were detonated.

The Lebanese Foreign Ministry described the explosions as a “dangerous and deliberate Israeli escalation” which it said had been “accompanied by Israeli threats to expand the war towards Lebanon on a large scale”.

Lebanese internal security forces said a number of wireless communication devices were detonated across Lebanon, especially in Beirut’s southern suburbs, a Hezbollah stronghold. The pagers that detonated were the latest model brought in by Hezbollah in recent months, three security sources said.

Lebanese Health Minister Firass Abiad said 2,800 people had been wounded in the explosions, 200 of them critically. Many of those hurt included Hezbollah fighters who are the sons of top officials from the armed group, two security sources told a leading media portal.

One of the fighters killed was the son of a Hezbollah member of the Lebanese parliament, Ali Ammar, they said. Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon, Mojtaba Amani, suffered a “superficial injury” in a pager explosion and is currently under observation in hospital, Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency said. There was no word from the Israeli government on the explosions.

In neighbouring Syria, 14 people were wounded “after pagers used by Hezbollah exploded,” Britain-based war monitor, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said.

Earlier on Tuesday, Israel announced it was broadening the aims of the war sparked by the Hamas attacks to include its fight against Hezbollah along its border with Lebanon.

To date, Israel’s objectives have been to crush Hamas and bring home the hostages seized by Palestinian militants during the October 7 attacks that sparked the war.

On Tuesday, Israel’s domestic security agency said it had foiled a plot by Lebanese militant group Hezbollah to assassinate a former senior defence official in the coming days.

The Shin Bet agency, which did not name the official, said in a statement it had seized an explosive device attached to a remote detonation system, using a mobile phone and a camera that Hezbollah had planned to operate from Lebanon. (IANS)