Eight people were killed and almost 2,750 wounded - 200 of them critically - in a spree of simultaneous detonations of pagers across Lebanon, health minister Firass Abiad said on Tuesday.
Hizbullah blamed Israel for a spree of pager blasts across Lebanon, saying it will get “its fair punishment”, according to a statement released by the militant group on Tuesday.
A Hizbullah 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 Hizbullah have been engaged in cross-border warfare in parallel with the Gaza war which erupted last October, the worst such escalation in years.
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The Israeli military declined to comment on Reuters enquiries about the detonations.
Hizbullah 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.
One of the fighters killed was the son of a Hizbullah member of the Lebanese parliament, two security sources told Reuters.
Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon, Mojtaba Amani, suffered a minor injury when a pager exploded, Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency reported.
“Amani has a superficial injury and is currently under observation in a hospital,” Fars quoted a source as saying.
Reuters could not immediately confirm the report.
The pagers that detonated were the latest model brought in by Hizbullah in recent months, three security sources said.
A Reuters journalist saw ambulances rushing through the southern suburbs of the capital Beirut, a Hizbullah stronghold, amid widespread panic. A security source said that devices were also exploding in the south of Lebanon.
At Mount Lebanon hospital, a Reuters reporter saw motorcycles rushing to the emergency room, where people with their hands bloodied were screaming in pain.
The head of the Nabatieh public hospital in the south of the country, Hassan Wazni, told Reuters that around 40 wounded people were being treated at his facility. The wounds included injuries to the face, eyes and limbs.
The wave of explosions lasted around an hour after the initial detonations, which took place about 3.45pm local time. It was not immediately clear how the devices were detonated.
Lebanese internal security forces said a number of wireless communication devices were detonated across Lebanon, especially in Beirut’s southern suburbs, leading to injuries.
Groups of people huddled at the entrance of buildings to check on people they knew who may have been wounded, the Reuters journalist said.
Regional broadcasters carrying CCTV footage which showed what appeared to be a small hand-held device placed next to a grocery store cashier where an individual was paying spontaneously exploding.
In other footage, an explosion appeared to knock out someone standing at a fruit stand at a market area.
Lebanon’s crisis operations centre, which is run by the health ministry, asked all medical workers to head to their respective hospitals to help cope with the massive numbers of wounded coming in for urgent care. It said healthcare workers should not use pagers.
The Lebanese Red Cross said more than 50 ambulances and 300 emergency medical staff were dispatched to help in the evacuation of victims.
Hizbullah fired missiles at Israel immediately after the October 7th attacks by Hamas gunmen on Israel that triggered the Gaza war. Hizbullah and Israel have been exchanging fire constantly ever since, while avoiding a major escalation.
Also on Tuesday, Gaza’s health ministry said that Israel’s military offensive in the Gaza Strip has killed at least 41,252 Palestinians and wounded 95,497 since October 7th.
Israel on Tuesday added the safe return of its citizens to their homes near the border with Lebanon to its formal war goals amid reports that prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu planned to replace his defence minister with a hawkish rival.
Mr Netanyahu’s office said he laid out the war aim in an overnight security cabinet meeting.
Tens of thousands of people have been displaced from towns and villages on both sides of the border by near-daily exchanges of fire between Israeli forces and the Lebanese Hizbullah.
Hizbullah opened a second front against Israel a day after the war in the Gaza Strip began with an attack by the Palestinian militant group Hamas on Israel on October 7th, and fighting across the Israel-Lebanon border has since escalated.
“The security cabinet has updated the objectives of the war to include the following: Returning the residents of the north securely to their homes. Israel will continue to act to implement this objective,” a statement from Mr Netanyahu’s office said.
Israel has said it prefers a diplomatic solution that would see Hizbullah moved farther back from the border.
However, Hizbullah, which also says it wants to avoid all-out conflict, says that only an end to the war in Gaza will stop the fighting. Gaza ceasefire efforts are deadlocked after months of faltering talks mediated by Qatar, Egypt and the United States. – Reuters
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