The audacious pager attack in Lebanon, which killed 12 people and injured at least 2,800, has increased tensions between Israel and militant group Hezbollah, which vowed to retaliate.
Hezbollah, the Lebanese government and Iran blamed Israel for the near-simultaneous blasts on Tuesday afternoon. Many of those injured were members of the Tehran-backed organization, which has been trading cross-border fire with Israel for almost a year.
However, some civilians were hurt as the devices exploded in supermarkets and homes, and two children were among the 12 people killed, Lebanese officials said.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Israel neither confirmed nor denied responsibility, and its officials are refusing to speak about the incident — which is often the case when its intelligence services are blamed for attacks on the country’s enemies.
Hospitals in the Lebanese capital of Beirut quickly filled up with people rushing in with injuries that included having their fingers blown off. One widely shown piece of footage showed a man getting a pager out his of pocket at a supermarket as it beeped, and the device exploding soon after. It was unclear if he or the two nearby people were harmed.
The explosions took place at about 3:30pm mainly in the southern suburbs of Beirut, where Hezbollah has a strong presence.
Photo: AFP
About 200 people are in critical condition, Lebanese media said.
“These pagers were detonated with high tech by the Israeli enemy,” Hezbollah lawmaker Ibrahim Mousawi told the group’s television channel.
Lebanese Minister of Information Ziyad Makari called the attack “a serious violation of Lebanese sovereignty and a crime by all standards.”
Hezbollah, designated a terrorist group by the US, and Israel have been fighting since the Israel-Hamas war erupted in Gaza in October last year. Hezbollah has been acting in solidarity with Hamas — both groups are supported by Iran — and demanding a ceasefire.
Tens of thousands of civilians have had to flee their homes in northern Israel and southern Lebanon amid the cross-border missile and drone strikes. Hundreds of Hezbollah fighters and about 50 Israelis have been killed.
“Hezbollah will retaliate,” said Harel Menashri, a cybersecurity expert who used to work for Shin Bet, Israel’s internal intelligence agency.
“They will also learn from this. They are a serious organization and very determined,” Menashri added.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told one of US President Joe Biden’s senior Middle East envoys this week that an all-out conflict between Israeli forces and Hezbollah is becoming more likely.
Diplomacy looks like it is failing, and war might be the only way to stop Hezbollah’s attacks and enable Israeli civilians to return to the northern border area, Netanyahu told US Special Presidential Coordinator for Global Infrastructure and Energy Security Amos Hochstein.
The Israeli Cabinet on Monday agreed to make the return of those displaced people an official war objective.
The US is trying to calm the situation and Hochstein, who handles the Israel-Lebanon file for the White House, told Netanyahu that a deeper conflict is not in Israel’s interest and would only risk a region-wide war, Bloomberg reported.
The US would not comment on the pager explosions, beyond saying it had no knowledge of them in advance. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was in Egypt yesterday to meet the country’s president and try to advance ceasefire talks between Israel and Hamas. He is not expected to travel to Israel.
“The pager attack in Lebanon brings Israel and Hezbollah closer to the brink of an all-out war,” Israeli military analyst Amos Harel said in a column in Haaretz, a local newspaper.
“Israel is waiting for Hezbollah’s response. If it decides to respond deep inside Israel’s territory, it is possible that the meaning will be a deterioration into war,” Harel said.
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