A second wave of bombings hit Hezbollah strongholds in Lebanon on Wednesday, killing 14 people and wounding more than 450, officials said, raising fears of a full-blown war with Israel.
A source close to Hezbollah said walkie-talkies used by its members exploded in its stronghold of Beirut, and state media reported similar explosions in southern and eastern Lebanon.
AFPTV footage showed people running for cover when the blast occurred during a funeral for Hezbollah militants in southern Beirut in the afternoon.
The Health Ministry said 14 people were killed and more than 450 injured in the latest attacks. It said the devices targeted were walkie-talkies.
The attack came a day after the simultaneous explosion of hundreds of paging devices used by Hezbollah killed 12 people, including two children, and wounded more than 2,800 in Lebanon. Israel was blamed for the unprecedented assault.
There was no comment from Israel, which announced hours before Tuesday’s attacks that it was broadening its war aims against Hamas in Gaza to include the fight against the Palestinian group’s ally Hezbollah.
“The center of gravity is moving north,” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant said during a tour of an air base on Wednesday. “We are at the beginning of a new phase of the war.”
Israeli authorities have remained tight-lipped about the explosions, which were reported on television news bulletins and made newspaper headlines.
Amos Harel of the left-leaning Haaretz newspaper said the pager and walkie-talkie explosions had “brought Israel and Hezbollah to the brink of all-out war.”
Iran-backed Hezbollah has been engaged in almost daily cross-border gunfire with Israeli forces since Palestinian militants attacked Israel on October 7, sparking a war in Gaza.
Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib warned that the “blatant attack on Lebanon’s sovereignty and security” was a dangerous development that could “signal a wider war”.
Hezbollah said Israel was “fully responsible for this criminal aggression” and vowed revenge.
The large number of people killed at once filled the hospitals in Hezbollah strongholds.
“The injuries were mainly to the eyes and hands, fingers were cut off, shrapnel penetrated the eyes – some people have lost their sight,” said Joelle Khadra, a doctor at a Beirut hospital.
A doctor at another hospital in the Lebanese capital said he had worked through the night and the injuries were “extraordinary – something he had never seen before”.
– Heavy blow –
Analysts said militants likely planted explosives in the paging devices before they were delivered to Hezbollah.
“This was more than just a forced override of lithium batteries,” said Charles Lister of the Middle East Institute.
The analyst said, “A small plastic explosive with a battery was almost certainly hidden inside, which could have been used for remote detonation via a call or page.” He also said that the Israeli spy agency “Mossad had infiltrated the supply chain.”
The dead included the 10-year-old daughter of a Hezbollah member, who was killed when her father’s pager exploded in eastern Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, a source close to the family and the group said.
Tehran’s ambassador to Beirut, Mojtaba Amani, who was injured, said on the social media platform X that it was “a matter of pride for me that my blood is mixed with the blood of the injured Lebanese people” after what he called a “horrible terrorist crime”.
The attack deals a major blow to Hezbollah, which was already concerned about the security of its communications after losing several key commanders in targeted air strikes in recent months.
Initial findings from a Lebanese investigation into the blasts showed that bombs had been planted in pagers, a security official said.
“The data shows that the devices were pre-programmed to explode and explosive material was placed near the batteries,” the official said, requesting anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.
A source close to Hezbollah, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the pagers were “recently imported” and appeared to have been “sabotaged at the source.”
After The New York Times reported that the pagers were ordered from Taiwanese manufacturer Gold Apollo, the company said they were produced by its Hungarian partner BAC Consulting Kft.
A government spokesman in Budapest said the company was “a trading intermediary with no manufacturing or operational sites in Hungary”.
Lufthansa and Air France announced they would suspend flights to Tel Aviv, Tehran and Beirut until Thursday, amid fears of a regional conflict nearly a year after the Gaza war.
– ‘Extremely Unstable’ –
Hundreds of Lebanese fighters have been killed in ongoing gunfire between Israeli troops and Hezbollah since October, and dozens of others, including Israeli soldiers, have been killed.
They have forced thousands of people on both sides of the border to leave their homes.
U.N. human rights chief Volker Turk said Tuesday’s attack came at an “extremely volatile time,” describing the blasts as “shocking” and saying the impact on civilians was “unacceptable.”
UN chief Antonio Guterres urged governments “not to weaponise civilian objects”.
Senior diplomats from the US, Britain, Germany, France and Italy will meet in Paris on Thursday to discuss rising tensions in the Middle East, ahead of a UN Security Council meeting on Friday, sources said.
The war that broke out as a result of the attack on October 7 resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to AFP calculations based on official Israeli figures. This figure also includes hostages who died in captivity.
Of the 251 people taken hostage by the militants, 97 are still in Gaza, 33 of whom the Israeli military says are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory military offensive has killed at least 41,272 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to figures provided by the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry, which the United Nations has deemed reliable.
On Wednesday, the civil protection agency in Gaza said five people were killed in an Israeli air strike on a school turned shelter, while the Israeli military said it targeted Hamas militants.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
