Beirut- A second wave of device explosions killed several people and wounded more than 100 in Hezbollah strongholds of Lebanon on Wednesday, officials said, stoking fears of an all-out war in the region.
A source close to Hezbollah said walkie-talkies used by its members blew up in its Beirut stronghold, with state media reporting similar blasts in south and east Lebanon.
Initial reports said three people were killed and more than 100 wounded in the latest attacks, the Lebanese authorities said, with the health ministry also describing the devices targeted as walkie-talkies.
Media reports say walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah blew up in the southern suburbs of the capital Beirut, the Bekaa Valley, and southern Lebanon, which are seen as its strongholds.
It came a day after the simultaneous explosion of hundreds of paging devices used by Hezbollah killed 12 persons, including two children, and wounded up to 2,800 others across Lebanon, in an unprecedented attack blamed on Israel.
There was no comment from Israel, which only hours before the attacks on Sept 17 had announced it was broadening the aims of its war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip to include its fight against the Palestinian group’s ally Hezbollah.
Hezbollah said Israel was “fully responsible for this criminal aggression” and reiterated it would avenge the attack, while vowing to continue its fight against Israel in support of the people of Gaza.
Cross-border exchanges with Israeli forces were “ongoing and separate from the difficult reckoning that the criminal enemy must await for its massacre,” Hezbollah said.
Hezbollah said a speech by the movement’s Secretary-General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, planned for Thursday, will clarify matters and that the movement will face a new pattern and a new confrontation with the enemy.
Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib warned the “blatant assault on Lebanon’s sovereignty and security” was a dangerous development that could “signal a wider war”.
The influx of so many casualties all at once overwhelmed hospitals in the Lebanese capital.
At a Beirut hospital, doctor Joelle Khadra said “the injuries were mainly to the eyes and hands, with finger amputations, shrapnel in the eyes – some people lost their sight.”
A doctor at another Beirut hospital said he had worked through the night and that the injuries were “out of this world – never seen anything like it”.
The walkie-talkies were purchased by Hezbollah five months ago, around the same time that the pagers were bought, said a security source.
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 the detonations on Sept 17, a senior Lebanese security source said.
One Hezbollah official said the detonation was the group’s “biggest security breach” in its history.
Since October 2023, the unabating exchanges of fire between Israeli troops and Hezbollah have killed hundreds of mostly fighters in Lebanon, and dozens including soldiers on the Israeli side.
The UN Security Council is due to meet on Friday to discuss the latest situation in Lebanon, council president Slovenia said on Wednesday.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk called for an independent investigation into the events surrounding exploding pagers.
The simultaneous targeting of thousands of individuals, without knowing who held the devices or their location violated international human rights law and possibly international humanitarian law, Mr Turk said in a statement.
“There must be an independent, thorough and transparent investigation as to the circumstances of these mass explosions, and those who ordered and carried out such an attack must be held to account,” he said.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Sept 18 that civilian objects should not be weaponised.
“I think it’s very important that there is an effective control of civilian objects, not to weaponise civilian objects – that should be a rule that… governments should, be able to implement,” Mr Guterres said at a briefing at UN headquarters.
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 under licence by a company called BAC, based in Hungary’s capital Budapest.
Lebanon pager blasts disgrace to the West: Iranian president
Iranian president President Masoud Pezeshkian says Israel’s pager detonations in Lebanon are a shame for the regime’s Western backers, not least the United States.
The Western supporters of Israel, the Iranian president said, feel unbound to any principle in pursuing their inhumane agenda.
Speaking at a Cabinet meeting in Tehran on Wednesday, Pezeshkian said the September 17 pager explosions are another proof of the fall of humanity in the West and that they do not want a ceasefire in Gaza.
“Using tools usually made to enhance the welfare of humans as a means of terror and destruction against those whose views do not align with us is proof of the fall of humanity and of the dominance of savagery and criminality,” he said.
“This event once again showed that although the Western states and Americans claim they want a ceasefire, they practically offer full support for blind crimes, killings and assassinations.”
The Iranian president said Muslim nations must join hands to break the chain of Israeli massacres.
“The cure for this situation and breaking the chain of oppression and crimes of the Zionist regime and its supporters against the oppressed Palestinians and the Muslim world lies in the unity and cohesion of Muslims and Islamic countries,” he said.
The explosions of thousands of pagers widely used by resistance factions and also public service workers left at least a dozen dead and around 3,000 people injured.
The Lebanese government has blamed Israel and vowed to file a complaint with the United Nations over the attack.
Hezbollah has promised the Israeli regime will receive ‘just punishment’ for the attack.
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