BEIRUT — Militant group Hezbollah promised to retaliate against Israel after accusing it of detonating pagers across Lebanon on Tuesday, killing nine people and wounding nearly 3,000 others who included fighters and Iran’s envoy to Beirut.
Lebanese Information Minister Ziad Makary condemned the late-afternoon detonation of the pagers – handheld devices that Hezbollah and others in Lebanon use to send messages — as an “Israeli aggression”. Hezbollah said Israel would receive “its fair punishment” for the blasts.
The Israeli military, which has been engaged in cross-border fighting with Iran-backed Hezbollah since the start of the Gaza war in October, declined to respond to questions about the detonations.
The death toll rose from eight to nine on Tuesday night while the number of injured remained at 2,750, Lebanon’s health ministry said.
Hezbollah confirmed in an earlier statement that the deaths included at least two of its fighters and a young girl.
The pagers exploded in southern Lebanon, the southern suburbs of Beirut known as Dahiyeh and the eastern Bekaa Valley – all Hezbollah strongholds.
In one instance, closed-circuit surveillance video carried by regional broadcasters showed a person paying at a grocery store as what appeared to be a small handheld device placed next to the cashier exploded.
A Hezbollah official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the incident was the “biggest security breach” for the group in nearly a year of conflict with Israel.
The New York Times reported that Israel hid explosive material in the Taiwan-made Gold Apollo pagers before they were imported to Lebanon, citing American and other officials briefed on the operation. The material was implanted next to the battery with a switch that could be triggered remotely to detonate.
The Palestinian militant group Hamas, which is waging war with Israel in Gaza, said the pager blasts were an “escalation” that will only lead Israel to “failure and defeat”.
UN special coordinator for Lebanon Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert deplored the attack in a statement and said it “marked an extremely concerning escalation” in the conflict.
Washington said it was not involved in the explosions and did not know who was responsible. The U.S. renewed calls for a diplomatic solution to tensions between Israel and Lebanon.
It urged Iran — which with its allies Hezbollah, Yemen’s Houthis and armed groups in Iraq has formed an “Axis of Resistance” against Israeli and U.S. influence — not to take advantage of any incident to raise instability.
Without commenting directly on the explosions in Lebanon, an Israeli military spokesman said the chief of staff, Major General Herzi Halevi, met with senior officers on Tuesday evening to assess the situation. No policy change was announced but “vigilance must continue to be maintained”, he said.
Hezbollah fighters have been using pagers as a low-tech means of communication in an attempt to evade Israeli location-tracking, two sources familiar with the group’s operations told Reuters this year.
A pager is a wireless telecommunications device that receives and displays messages.