Walkie talkies explode in Hezbollah’s Beirut day after pager explosions

BEIRUT: A day after pagers exploded across Lebanon, killing nine people and injuring more than 2,800 others, sources close to Lebanese militant outfit Hezbollah said walkie-talkies have blown up at strongholds across Beirut.

How many walkie-talkies blew up are not know yet, but casualties are feared.

Iran-backed Hezbollah said today that it attacked Israeli artillery positions with rockets in the first strike at its arch-rival since pager blasts wounded thousands of its members in Lebanon and raised the prospect of a wider Middle East war.

Israel’s spy agency Mossad, which has a long history of sophisticated operations on foreign soil, planted explosives inside pagers imported by Hezbollah months before Tuesday’s detonations, a senior Lebanese security source and another source told news agency Reuters.

Last evening, Lebanese Health Minister Firass Abiad confirmed that nine people were killed and around 2,800 wounded in the incident.

The minister, in a televised press conference, said the blasts “killed nine people, including a girl”, adding that “About 2,800 people were injured and more than 200 of them critically”. The injuries were mostly on the face, hands and stomach, he had said.

Iran’s state media had reported that its Ambassador to Lebanon, Mojtaba Amani, was also wounded in yesterday’s pager incident. (NDTV)