At least nine dead and hundreds injured when pagers explode against Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria

BEIRUT (AP) — Pagers used by hundreds of members of the militant group Hezbollah exploded almost simultaneously in Lebanon and Syria on Tuesday, killing at least nine people – including an 8-year-old girl – and wounding several thousand, authorities said. Hezbollah and the Lebanese government blamed Israel for what appeared to be a sophisticated, long-range attack.

Among those injured was Iran's ambassador to Lebanon. The mysterious explosions came amid growing tensions between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah, which have exchanged fire across the Israeli-Lebanese border since the October 7 Hamas attack that sparked the war in Gaza.

The exploded pagers were apparently acquired by Hezbollah after the group's leader ordered his members to stop using cellphones in February and warned them that they could be tracked by Israeli intelligence. A Hezbollah official told The Associated Press the pagers were a new brand but declined to say how long they had been in use.

At around 3:30 p.m. local time on Tuesday, as people shopped for groceries, sat in cafes or rode cars and motorcycles in the afternoon rush hour, the pagers began to heat up in their hands or pockets and then explode – leaving blood-splattered scenes and panicked passersby.

Many of the victims appeared to be members of Hezbollah, but it was not immediately clear whether others were carrying pagers.

The explosions occurred mainly in areas where the group has a strong presence, particularly in a southern Beirut suburb and in the Bekaa region of eastern Lebanon, as well as in Damascus, Lebanese security officials and a Hezbollah official said. The Hezbollah official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press.

The AP reached out to the Israeli military, which declined to comment. The explosions came hours after Israel's domestic intelligence agency said it had foiled a Hezbollah attempt to kill a former senior Israeli security official with a planted explosive device that could be detonated remotely.

State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said the United States had “no prior knowledge of this incident” and was not involved. “At this point, we are gathering information,” he said.

Experts said the pager explosions indicated a long-planned operation. The operation may have been carried out by infiltrating the supply chain and rigging the devices with explosives before they were delivered to Lebanon.

Whatever the means, it targeted an extraordinary number of people with hundreds of small explosions – all at once, wherever the pager bearer happened to be – and left some maimed.

A video circulating on the Internet shows a man browsing through fruits and vegetables in a grocery store when the bag he is carrying on his hip explodes, causing him to fall flat on the ground and passersby to run away.

The injured were brought to overcrowded hospitals on stretchers, some with missing hands, their faces partially blown off or with gaping holes in their hips and legs near the pocket area, AP photographers reported. On a main street in central Beirut, a car door was splattered with blood and the windshield was cracked.

Lebanon's Health Minister Firas Abiad told Qatari broadcaster Al Jazeera that at least nine people were killed in the explosions, including an eight-year-old girl. Around 2,750 people were injured, 200 of them seriously. Most suffered injuries to their faces, hands or stomachs.

Hezbollah said in a statement that two of its members were among those killed. One of them was Mahdi Ammar, the son of a Hezbollah MP, and two sons of other prominent figures were wounded, said the Hezbollah official, who asked not to be identified.

“We hold the Israeli enemy fully responsible for this criminal aggression, which was also directed against civilians,” Hezbollah said, adding that Israel “will certainly receive its just punishment.”

The Iranian state news agency IRNA reported that the country's ambassador, Mojtaba Amani, suffered superficial injuries from an exploding pager and was being treated in a hospital.

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah had previously warned members of the group not to carry mobile phones because Israel could use them to track their movements and carry out targeted attacks.

Sean Moorhouse, a former British army officer and bomb disposal expert, said videos of the explosions suggested a small explosive charge – as small as a pencil eraser – had been placed inside the bombs and they would have had to be tampered with before being dropped.

“It seems very likely that all of these encrypted pagers were modified before being purchased by Hezbollah, indicating a very successful Mossad operation,” he said, referring to Israel's foreign intelligence service.

Israel has a long history of deadly operations far beyond its borders.

In January, Saleh Arouri, a senior Hamas official, was killed in an airstrike on a Beirut apartment building that Israel blamed. In July, Israel assassinated Hezbollah's top commander in another airstrike. Hours later, Ismail Haniyeh, the supreme leader of Hamas, died in a mysterious explosion in Iran that was also blamed on Israel.

Israel has previously killed Hamas fighters with explosive-laden cell phones and is widely considered to be the mastermind of the Stuxnet computer virus attack on Iran's nuclear program in 2010.

The pager bombings are also likely to have heightened Hezbollah's concerns about vulnerabilities in its security and communications, as Israeli politicians threaten to escalate the months-long conflict between the two sides. The almost daily exchanges of fire between Israel and Hezbollah have killed hundreds in Lebanon and several dozen in Israel, and displaced tens of thousands on both sides of the border.

On Tuesday, Israel said it was now an official war aim to stop Hezbollah attacks in the north so residents could return to their homes. Israeli Defense Minister Gallant said this week that the focus of the conflict was shifting from Gaza to northern Israel and that time was running out for a diplomatic solution with Hezbollah. “The direction is clear,” he said.

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This story has been updated to correct the name of the son of the Hezbollah lawmaker killed in a pager explosion.

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AP reporters Hussein Malla, Hassan Ammar, Fadi Tawil and Sarah El Deeb in Beirut, Jon Gambrell in Dubai, Amir Vahdat in Tehran, Michael Biesecker in Washington and Josef Federman in Jerusalem contributed to this report.

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