Hizbollah has vowed to retaliate against Israel for a sophisticated and co-ordinated attack that detonated thousands of pagers carried by the Lebanese militia’s members, killing at least a dozen and injuring thousands and plunging Beirut into a widespread panic.
Two children and 10 Hizbollah members were killed in Tuesday’s apparent sabotage of the low-tech systems it uses to evade Israeli surveillance and assassination attempts, according to the Lebanese health ministry.
The group said on Wednesday that it would continue its attacks along the southern border with Israel that have raised fears of a widening regional conflict, but vowed to avenge separately the pager blasts. “This is another reckoning [for Israel] and it will come, god willing,” Hizbollah said.
The blasts took place in several areas of Lebanon including the capital Beirut, the southern city of Tyre and the western area of Hermel, as well as in parts of Syria. Images circulated on social media of explosions and of people with bloodied pocket areas, ears or faces being taken to hospital.
Israel’s military has declined to comment, but the explosions will heighten tension between two forces that have been locked in intensifying border clashes for almost a year.
In a statement on Tuesday evening, the UN’s special co-ordinator for Lebanon, Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert called the attack an “extremely concerning escalation” and urged all parties “to refrain from any further action, or bellicose rhetoric, which could trigger a wider conflagration that nobody can afford”.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday evening held consultations with his top security chiefs, including defence minister Yoav Gallant, in Tel Aviv.
Hizbollah said that on Tuesday afternoon “many” pagers belonging to people working in its “different units and institutions exploded”. Up to 2,800 people were injured in the blasts, the health ministry said on Wednesday.
Iran’s ambassador to Beirut, Mojtaba Amani, was among those injured, an Iranian official told the Financial Times, adding “his overall condition is good”. The Islamic republic’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, “strongly condemned the Zionist regime’s terrorist attack” in a call with his Lebanese counterpart, said Iran’s foreign ministry.
Family members of the injured crowded on a street outside the American University Hospital in central Beirut. Ali, an elderly man, said his great-nephew belonged to Hizbollah and had been injured in the leg when his pager exploded. “No one from the family has been able to see him,” he said.
Images from the scenes of an explosion showed the remnants of a pager with identifiable markings from Gold Apollo Systems, a Taiwan-based company.
Gold Apollo denied on Wednesday that it made the pagers used in the attack and said the model was made under licence by a company it identified as BAC Consulting, based in Budapest.
“According to the agreement, we authorise BAC to use our brand trademark for product sales in specific regions, but the design and manufacturing of the products are entirely handled by BAC,” Gold Apollo said.
Taiwan prosecutors have opened a probe into the provenance of the pagers and the potential involvement of Gold Apollo. The Shilin Prosecutors Office said a department handling national security cases was investigating the case.
Taiwan’s economic affairs ministry said there was no record of direct shipments of Gold Apollo pagers to Lebanon over the past two years, according to its export statistics. “The company exported 40,929 sets between January and August this year. The main export destinations were European and American markets,” it said.
The US said it had no advance knowledge of the attack and had played no operational or intelligence role in the explosions. State department spokesperson Matt Miller declined to comment on who was behind the explosions, and added it was “too early to say” how they would affect Gaza ceasefire negotiations.
Several foreign airlines, including Lufthansa and Air France on Tuesday evening said they were suspending flights to and from Tel Aviv for the coming days.
Hizbollah turned to low-tech communications after Israel increased assassinations of its senior commanders. The enemies began trading cross-border fire following Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel.
Over the past 11 months, Israeli strikes have killed about 470 people in Lebanon, mostly Hizbollah fighters, while the militant group’s attacks on Israel have killed more than 40 people.
This year Hassan Nasrallah, Hizbollah’s leader, implored his fighters to jettison their smartphones to avoid surveillance, prompting many to switch to older technologies such as pagers, landlines and human couriers.
Tuesday’s explosions in Lebanon followed what Israel said had been a foiled assassination attempt by Hizbollah on a former senior official in Israel’s security establishment.
Netanyahu’s security cabinet on Tuesday expanded the objectives of Israel’s almost year-long campaign against Hamas in Gaza to include securing the northern front against Hizbollah.
It voted to add “returning the residents of the north securely to their homes”, in reference to more than 60,000 Israelis who have been displaced by the clashes on the Israeli-Lebanese border. The fighting has also forced about 100,000 Lebanese from their homes in the border region.
The security cabinet’s decision was viewed by analysts as a shift in priorities for the Israel Defense Forces, raising fears that the clashes between Hizbollah and Israel could spiral into a full-scale war.
Additional reporting by Neri Zilber in Tel Aviv, Andrew England in London, Steff Chávez in Washington
This story has been amended to reflect the fact that British Airways has not suspended its flights to Tel Aviv
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