Hundreds of Hezbollah pagers explode in apparent attack in Lebanon

At least eight people were killed and more than 2,700 injured, many of them Hezbollah fighters based in Lebanon, when the hand pagers they used to communicate exploded, Lebanon's health minister said on Tuesday.

Firass Abiad told a news conference that the explosions took place in several Beirut suburbs, the Lebanese news agency reported. He said many of the victims suffered injuries to their faces, hands and stomachs.

He said one of those killed was an 8-year-old girl.

The immediate cause of the explosions was not immediately clear, although Hezbollah was quick to blame Israel for the “sinful aggression,” saying Israel would receive “its just punishment.”

A Hezbollah official told Reuters that the pager detonation was the “biggest security breach” the group had suffered in its nearly year-long war with Israel.

Mojtaba Amani, the Iranian ambassador to Lebanon, was also injured in the incident, but not seriously, according to the semi-official Iranian news agency Mehr. Hezbollah is supported materially and financially by Iran.

There was no immediate comment from the Israel Defense Forces.

Increasing violence in the West Bank: another front in Israel's conflicts

Yet the incident came just hours after Israel's security cabinet issued a statement announcing the return of residents of Israel's northern areas to their homes. Hezbollah, long Israel's enemy, has repeatedly fired rockets into Israeli territory since the October 7 Hamas attacks, forcing many residents to flee to the south.

A pager is a small electronic device that you can wear or put in your pocket that beeps or vibrates when someone tries to contact you. It displays the phone number or sometimes a short message. Pagers can usually only receive information, not send it, making their location difficult to track.

Small bombs on pagers and cell phones can be located remotely.

Israel has been warning for months against launching a military operation to drive Hezbollah away from its border.

Hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah are nothing new. There have been repeated clashes and exchanges of fire along their shared border since the mid-1980s, and they fought a major war in 2006.

Hezbollah says it has stepped up its attacks on Israel to support Hamas in Gaza. But these attacks are also part of a broader regional commitment to confront and pressure Israel. Lina Khatib, a Middle East expert at the London-based think tank Chatham House, recently noted that Hezbollah's fight against Israel is ultimately not about helping the Palestinians or even Hamas, but about self-preservation.

“The group could have intervened on a large scale in October, before Israel significantly weakened Hamas' military power, but it did not. Hezbollah would only wage a full-scale war with Israel if the group felt it faced an existential threat of its own (which it does not currently). It will not sacrifice itself for Palestine.”

Rose Kelanic, director of the Middle East program at the Washington-based think tank Defense Priorities, said if it is confirmed that the operation was carried out by Israel, the message is clear.

“The Israelis literally just told Hezbollah they have their number by blowing up those pagers.”

Kelanic said the pagers could have been triggered by purely cyberattacks, such as the spread of a computer virus or “worm.” The Israelis are said to have used a similar approach when they destroyed Iranian nuclear centrifuges by spinning them so fast that they broke. Or the pagers could have been physically sabotaged at some point in the supply chain.

However, she said even if they were “just” cyberattacks, there was probably an on-site component. For example, in the case of the worm called “Stuxnet,” which is believed to have been implanted in Iranian centrifuge software, it was probably uploaded by someone with a USB stick, since the centrifuges were not connected to the internet.

“If I were Hezbollah, I would be looking around at everyone in the organization right now and wondering who the saboteur is.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Hezbollah pagers explode in apparent attack across Lebanon