Report: Hezbollah-used handheld radios detonate across Lebanon | Foreign policy, defense and security news

The handheld radios were purchased by Hezbollah five months ago, around the same time as the pagers were purchased, a security source said.

Israel's Mossad intelligence agency, which has a long history of sophisticated operations on foreign soil, planted explosives in Hezbollah-imported pagers months before Tuesday's blasts, a senior Lebanese security source and another source told Reuters.

The death toll has risen to 12, including two children, Lebanese Health Minister Firass Abiad said on Wednesday. Nearly 3,000 people were injured in Tuesday's attack, including many fighters from the militant group and the Iranian envoy in Beirut.

A Taiwanese pager maker denied making the pager devices that exploded in a brazen attack that raised the threat of all-out war between Iran-backed Hezbollah and Israel.

Gold Apollo said the devices were manufactured under license by a company called BAC, based in the Hungarian capital Budapest.

There was no immediate information on when Hezbollah launched its latest rocket attack, but the group usually announces such attacks shortly after they take place, suggesting it fired on Israeli artillery positions on Wednesday.

Hezbollah has vowed retaliatory strikes against Israel, whose military declined to comment on the attacks. Since the Gaza conflict erupted last October, the two sides have been engaged in a cross-border war that has stoked fears of a larger Middle East conflict that could also draw in the United States and Iran.

Jordan's Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi accused Israel of pushing the Middle East to the brink of regional war by orchestrating a dangerous escalation on many fronts.

“Hezbollah wants to avoid a full-scale war. It still wants to avoid it. But given the scale and the impact on families and civilians, the pressure will increase for a stronger response,” said Mohanad Hage Ali of the Carnegie Middle East Center.

Hezbollah, Iran's most powerful proxy in the Middle East, said in a statement it would continue to support Hamas in the Gaza Strip and that Israel should wait for a response to the Pager “massacre” in which fighters and others were bloodily injured, hospitalized or killed.

A Hezbollah official said the blast was the “biggest security breach” in the group's history.

Hospital footage reviewed by Reuters showed men with a variety of injuries, some to their faces, some missing fingers and gaping wounds on their hips where they had likely worn the pagers.

Several sources told Reuters that the attack appears to have been planned for months and follows a series of assassinations of Hezbollah and Hamas commanders and leaders for which Israel has been blamed since the start of the Gaza war.

First published: September 18, 2024 | 8:32 p.m. IS