Hundreds of members of the Lebanese armed group Hizbullah, including fighters and medics, were seriously wounded on Tuesday when the pagers they use to communicate exploded, a security source told Reuters.
A Hizbullah official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the detonation of the pagers was the “biggest security breach” the group had been subjected to in nearly a year of war with Israel.
The explosions took place amid heightened violence between Israel and Hizbullah, who have been engaged in cross-border warfare since the Gaza war erupted last October in the worst such escalation in years.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military to Reuters enquiries about the detonations.
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A Reuters journalist saw ambulances rushing through the southern suburbs of the capital Beirut amid widespread panic. Residents said explosions were taking place even 30 minutes after the initial blasts. The security source added that devices were also exploding in the south of Lebanon.
Groups of people huddled at the entrance of buildings to check on people they knew who may have been wounded, the Reuters journalist said.
Regional broadcasters carrying CCTV footage which showed what appeared to be a small hand-held device placed next to a grocery store cashier where an individual was paying spontaneously exploding. In other footage, an explosion appeared to knock out someone standing at a fruit stand at a market area.
Lebanon’s crisis operations centre, which is run by the health ministry, asked all medical workers to head to their respective hospitals to help cope with the massive numbers of wounded coming into for urgent care. It said healthcare workers should not use pagers.
Hizbullah fired missiles at Israel immediately after the October 7th attacks by Hamas gunmen on Israel. Hizbullah and Israel have been exchanging fire constantly ever since, while avoiding a major escalation as war rages in Gaza to the south.
Israel on Tuesday added the safe return of its citizens to their homes near the border with Lebanon to its formal war goals amid reports that prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu planned to replace his defence minister with a hawkish rival.
Mr Netanyahu’s office said he laid out the war aim in an overnight security cabinet meeting.
Tens of thousands of people have been displaced from towns and villages on both sides of the border by near-daily exchanges of fire between Israeli forces and the Lebanese Hizbullah.
Hizbullah opened a second front against Israel a day after the war in the Gaza Strip began with an attack by the Palestinian militant group Hamas on Israel on October 7th, and fighting across the Israel-Lebanon border has since escalated.
“The security cabinet has updated the objectives of the war to include the following: Returning the residents of the north securely to their homes. Israel will continue to act to implement this objective,” a statement from Mr Netanyahu’s office said.
Israel has said it prefers a diplomatic solution that would see Hizbullah moved farther back from the border.
However, Hizbullah, which also says it wants to avoid all-out conflict, says that only an end to the war in Gaza will stop the fighting. Gaza ceasefire efforts are deadlocked after months of faltering talks mediated by Qatar, Egypt and the United States. – Reuters
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