Hezbollah hit by exploding pagers, blames Israel; 9 dead, thousands injured

Hezbollah and the Lebanese government blamed Israel for what appeared to be a sophisticated, remote attack.

A US official said Israel briefed the US on the operation — in which small amounts of explosive secreted in the pagers were detonated — on Tuesday after it was concluded. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the information publicly.

The Israeli military declined to comment.

Among those wounded was Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon. The mysterious explosions came amid rising tensions between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah, which have exchanged fire across the Israel-Lebanon border since the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas that sparked the war in Gaza.

The pagers that blew up had apparently been acquired by Hezbollah after the group’s leader ordered members in February to stop using cellphones, warning they could be tracked by Israeli intelligence. A Hezbollah official told The Associated Press the pagers that were a new brand but declined to say how long they had been in use.

At about 3.30pm local time on Tuesday, as people shopped for groceries, sat in cafes or drove cars and motorcycles in the afternoon traffic, the pagers in their hands or pockets started heating up and then exploding — leaving blood-splattered scenes and panicking bystanders.

It appeared that many of those hit were members of Hezbollah, but it was not immediately clear if others also carried the pagers.

The blasts were mainly in areas where the group has a strong presence, particularly a southern Beirut suburb and in the Beqaa region of eastern Lebanon, as well as in Damascus, according to Lebanese security officials and a Hezbollah official. The Hezbollah official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the press.

The explosions came hours after Israel’s internal security agency said it had foiled an attempt by Hezbollah to kill a former senior Israeli security official using a planted explosive device that could be remotely detonated.

State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said the United States “was not aware of this incident in advance” and was not involved. “At this point, we’re gathering information,” he said.

Experts said the pager explosions pointed to a long-planned operation, possibly carried out by infiltrating the supply chain and rigging the devices with explosives before they were delivered to Lebanon.

Whatever the means, it targeted an extraordinary breadth of people with hundreds of small explosions — wherever the pager carrier happened to be — that left some maimed.

One online video showed a man picking through produce at a grocery store when the bag he was carrying at his hip exploded, sending him sprawling to the ground and bystanders running.

At overwhelmed hospitals, wounded were rushed in on stretchers, some with missing hands, faces partly blown away or gaping holes at their hips and legs, according to AP photographers. On a main road in central Beirut, a car door was splattered with blood and the windshield cracked.

Lebanon’s health minister, Firas Abiad, told Qatar’s Al Jazeera network at least nine people were killed, including an 8-year-old girl, and some 2,750 were wounded — 200 of them critically — by the explosions. Most had injuries on the face, hand, or around the abdomen.

It appeared eight of the dead belonged to Hezbollah. The group issued a statement confirming at least two members were killed in the pager bombings. One of them was the son of a Hezbollah member in parliament, according to the Hezbollah official who spoke anonymously. The group later issued announcements that six other members were killed Tuesday, though it did not specify how.

“We hold the Israeli enemy fully responsible for this criminal aggression that also targeted civilians,” Hezbollah said, adding that Israel will “for sure get its just punishment.”

Iranian state-run IRNA news agency said that the country’s ambassador, Mojtaba Amani, was superficially wounded by an exploding pager and was being treated at a hospital.

Previously, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah had warned the group’s members not to carry cellphones, saying they could be used by Israel to track and target them.

Sean Moorhouse, a former British Army officer and explosive ordnance disposal expert, said videos of the blasts suggested a small explosive charge — as small as a pencil eraser — had been placed into the devices. They would have had to have been rigged prior to delivery, very likely by Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence agency, he said.

Elijah J. Magnier, a Brussels-based senior political risk analyst, said he spoke with Hezbollah members who had examined pagers that failed to explode. What triggered the blasts, he said, appeared to be an error message sent to all the devices that caused them to vibrate, forcing the user to click on the buttons to stop the vibration. The combination detonated a small amount of explosives hidden inside and ensured that the user was present when the blast went off, he said.

Israel has a long history of carrying out deadly operations well beyond its borders. This year, separate Israeli airstrikes in Beirut killed Saleh Arouri, a senior Hamas official, and a top Hezbollah commander. A mysterious explosion in Iran, also blamed on Israel, killed Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’ supreme leader.

Israel has killed Hamas militants in the past with booby-trapped cellphones and it’s widely believed to have been behind the Stuxnet computer virus attack on Iran’s nuclear program in 2010.

The pager bombings also likely stoke Hezbollah’s worries about vulnerabilities in security and communications, as Israeli officials are threatening to escalate their monthslong conflict. The near-daily exchanges of fire between Israel and Hezbollah have killed hundreds in Lebanon and several dozen in Israel, and have displaced tens of thousands on both sides of the border.

Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, the UN special coordinator for Lebanon, deplored the attack and warned that it marks “an extremely concerning escalation in what is an already unacceptably volatile context.”

On Tuesday, Israel said that halting Hezbollah’s attacks in the north to allow residents to return to their homes is now an official war goal. Israeli Defense Minister Gallant said this week the focus of the conflict is shifting from Gaza to Israel’s north and that time is running out for a diplomatic solution with Hezbollah, saying “The trajectory is clear.”

AP

Photo by Reuters