At least nine people were killed and about 2,750 were wounded by exploding handheld pagers across Lebanon, the country’s health minister has said.
Videos of the explosions flooded social media.
Reuters confirmed the attack through an anonymous source connected to Hezbollah. The anonymous source told Reuters the attack was the “biggest security breach” of Hezbollah’s information system they’d ever seen.
A journalist on the scene also witnessed ambulances rushing the wounded to hospitals and several people said the pagers had continued to explode minutes after the initial attack.
The attack seems centered on Hezbollah and early reports indicate that the attack has hit fighters, medics, and even a diplomat. The Iranian news agency Mehr reported that Mojtaba Amani, the country’s ambassador to Lebanon, was injured.
Hezbollah told the Wall Street Journal that many of the explosions were concentrated in southern Lebanon in and around Beirut.
“Clearly the number will be in the hundreds of casualties,” Firas Abiad, Lebanon’s Health Minister, told the Wall Street Journal. “A lot of patients are in the emergency sections of hospitals in most parts of the country, and the health apparatus is working on triaging these cases.”
Video and images of the explosions flooded social media in the hour after the attack. In one video, a man is shopping for food at a grocery store when something in his pocket explodes and he lands on the ground, calling out in pain. In another, a man is checking out at a store and he sets his pager down on the counter. It explodes, injuring him and sending the clerk running. It’s unclear how much collateral damage there’s been from the attacks.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the exploding pagers were part of a recent shipment meant for Hezbollah fighters. Hundreds of them had the devices and a Hezbollah official speculated that they’d been infected by malware. Some people felt the pagers get hot before the explosion and got rid of them before the attack. Criminals and military organizations sometimes use pagers because they’re perceived as more secure than more traditional methods of communication like a smartphone.
The people behind the attack aren’t known, but Lebanon shares a border with Israel, and Hezbollah has been launching rockets into the country since October 7. Sneaking explosives into the pocket of an enemy is the kind of thing Israel does. In July, Israel assassinated a Hamas leader in Tehran, Iran with a remotely detonated package. A Mossad agent had, somehow, managed to plant the explosive device in his bedroom.
Click on the link below to watch the videos:
https://x.com/clashreport/status/1836034637585330245?t=qBnJYEO4MPGlOyvrJdgk7g&s=19
