Lebanon: Hezbollah pagers simultaneously explode killing nine, injuring over 2000, Israel warned of punishment

Nine people are dead, 200 are in critical condition and more than 2000 others have been injured following simultaneous explosions across Lebanon.

Handheld pagers, used by Lebanon’s Hezbollah, were detonated on Tuesday, local time.

Thousands of people have been rushed to hospitals across the country, with locals reporting hearing ambulance sirens for hours.

Hezbollah has blamed Israel for the attack, but Israel has yet to take responsibility.

Earlier this year, Hezbollah moved much of its communication from mobile phones to low-tech pagers after discovering that Israel was allegedly tracking Hezbollah members through cellular devices.

A pager is a wireless telecommunications device that receives and displays messages.

The handheld pagers have been widely used for some months.

A former UK military serviceman anonymously told the BBC: “The devices would have likely been packed with between 10 to 20 grams each of military-grade high explosive, hidden inside a fake electronic component.

It is unclear if Hezbollah had recently distributed a new batch of pagers or if the exploding devices have been used since the switch from mobile devices.

Lebanese Health Minister Firass Abiad said 2750 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 Reuters.

One of the fighters killed was the son of a Hezbollah member of the Lebanese parliament, Ali Ammar, they said.

“This is not a security targeting of one, two or three people. This is a targeting of an entire nation,” senior Hezbollah official Hussein Khalil said while paying his condolences for Ammar’s son.

Lebanese Information Minister Ziad Makary condemned the detonation of the pagers - used by Hezbollah and others in Lebanon to communicate - as an “Israeli aggression”.

Hezbollah said Israel would receive “its fair punishment” for the blasts.

Lebanese broadcaster al-Jadeed cited Ammar as saying what happened was Israeli aggression.

“We will deal with the enemy in the language it understands,” he added.

Iranian ambassador to Lebanon Mojtaba Amani suffered a “superficial injury” in Tuesday’s pager blasts and is under observation in a hospital, Iran’s Fars news agency said.

The Israeli military, which has been engaged in cross-border warfare with Hezbollah since the start of the Gaza war last October, declined to respond to Reuters’ questions about the detonations.

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.

Developments in Lebanon are extremely concerning, especially given the “extremely volatile” context, United Nations spokesman Stephane Dujarric said, adding that the UN deplores any civilian casualties.

Without commenting directly on the explosions in Lebanon, an Israeli military spokesman said the chief of staff, Major General Herzi Halevi, had met with senior officers on Tuesday evening to assess the situation.

No policy change was announced but “vigilance must continue to be maintained,” he said.

- With Reuters