At least nine people have been killed and over 100 wounded when hand-held radios or walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah exploded across the south of Lebanon and the group’s strongholds in the country’s capital, Beirut, on Wednesday.
One of the blasts occurred near a funeral organised by Hezbollah for those killed when thousands of pagers exploded across Lebanon on Tuesday. The number of people dead in Tuesday’s explosions has risen to 12, including two children.
The attacks have raised Hezbolah’s tensions with Israel – which it has blamed for the pager explosions – that were already high because of Tel Aviv’s war with Hamas in Gaza, and the group said it had used rockets to attack Israeli artillery positions
The coordinated targeting of communication devices used by Hezbollah is being widely seen as an attempt to throw the group in disarray and a way of demonstrating to its members that the attackers can get at them in ways they least expect.
A senior Lebanese security source and another person in the know told news agency Reuters that Israel’s spy agency Mossad, which has a long history of carrying out sophisticated operations on foreign soil, planted explosives inside pagers imported by Hezbollah months before they went off on Tuesday.
The senior Lebanese security source told Reuters the group had ordered 5,000 pagers made by Taiwan-based Gold Apollo and another source said three grams of explosives had been hidden in each of the ordered devices, which had gone undetected for months. Gold Apollo said the devices were made under licence by a company called BAC, based in Hungary.
Iran’s state media had reported that its Ambassador to Lebanon, Mojtaba Amani, was also wounded in Tuesday’s explosions.
The walkie-talkies which exploded on Wednesday, a source told Reuters, were purchased by Hezbollah five months ago, around the same time that the pagers were bought.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Wednesday that civilian objects should not be weaponised. “I think it’s very important that there is an effective control of civilian objects, not to weaponise civilian objects… that should be a rule that governments should, be able to implement,” he said.
Mr Guterres also warned of a risk of serious escalation. “As important as the event in itself, is the indication that this event confirms that there is a serious risk of a dramatic escalation in Lebanon — and everything must be done to avoid the escalation,” he said.
