{"id":48899,"date":"2024-09-17T22:07:15","date_gmt":"2024-09-17T17:07:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/?p=48899"},"modified":"2024-09-18T10:40:04","modified_gmt":"2024-09-18T05:40:04","slug":"at-least-eight-dead-over-2700-injured-in-lebanon-pager-explosions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/world\/at-least-eight-dead-over-2700-injured-in-lebanon-pager-explosions\/","title":{"rendered":"At least nine dead, over 2,750 injured in Lebanon pager explosions"},"content":{"rendered":"

BEIRUT (AP): Pagers used by hundreds of members of the\u00a0Hezbollah\u00a0<\/a>exploded near-simultaneously Tuesday in Lebanon and Syria, killing at least nine people, including an 8-year-old girl, and wounding several thousand, officials said.<\/p>\n

Hezbollah and the Lebanese government blamed Israel for what appeared to be a sophisticated remote attack.<\/p>\n

An American official said Israel briefed the United States on Tuesday after the conclusion of the operation, in which small amounts of explosives secreted in the pagers were detonated. However, the Israeli military declined to comment.<\/p>\n

Among those wounded was Iran\u2019s ambassador to Lebanon. The mysterious explosions came amid\u00a0rising tensions\u00a0between\u00a0Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah, which have exchanged fire across the Israel-Lebanon border since the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas that sparked the\u00a0war in Gaza.<\/p>\n

The pagers that blew up were acquired by Hezbollah after the group\u2019s leader ordered members in February to stop using cell phones, warning they could be tracked by Israeli intelligence.<\/p>\n

A Hezbollah official told The Associated Press the pagers were a new brand, but declined to say how long they had been in use.<\/p>\n

Taiwanese company Gold Apollo said Wednesday that it authorized its brand on the AR-924 pagers used by the Hezbollah militant group, but the devices were produced and sold by a company called BAC.<\/p>\n

At about 3:30 p.m. local time on Tuesday, as people shopped for groceries, sat in cafes or drove cars and motorcycles in the afternoon traffic, the pagers in their hands or pockets started heating up and then exploding \u2014 leaving blood-splattered scenes and panicking bystanders.<\/p>\n

It appeared that many of those hit were members of Hezbollah, but it was not immediately clear if non-Hezbollah members also carried any of the exploding pagers.<\/p>\n

The blasts were mainly in areas where the group has a strong presence, particularly a southern Beirut suburb and in the Beqaa region of eastern Lebanon, as well as in Damascus, according to Lebanese security officials and a Hezbollah official. The Hezbollah official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the press.<\/p>\n

The explosions came hours after Israel\u2019s internal security agency said it had foiled an attempt by Hezbollah to kill a former senior Israeli security official using a planted explosive device that could be remotely detonated.<\/p>\n

The United States \u201cwas not aware of this incident in advance\u201d and was not involved, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said. \u201cAt this point, we\u2019re gathering information.\u201d<\/p>\n

Experts said the pager explosions pointed to a long-planned operation, possibly carried out by infiltrating the supply chain and rigging the devices with explosives before they were delivered to Lebanon.<\/p>\n

Whatever the means, it targeted an extraordinary breadth of people with hundreds of small explosions \u2014 wherever the pager carrier happened to be \u2014 that left some maimed.<\/p>\n

One online video showed a man picking through produce at a grocery store when the bag he was carrying at his hip exploded, sending him sprawling to the ground and bystanders running.<\/p>\n

At overwhelmed hospitals, wounded were rushed in on stretchers, some with missing hands, faces partly blown away or gaping holes at their hips and legs, according to AP<\/em> photographers. On a main road in central Beirut, a car door was splattered with blood and the windshield cracked.<\/p>\n

Lebanon Health Minister Firas Abiad told Qatar\u2019s Al Jazeera network at least nine people were killed, including an 8-year-old girl, and some 2,750 were wounded \u2014 200 of them critically \u2014 by the explosions. Most had injuries on the face, hand, or around the abdomen.<\/p>\n

It appeared eight of the dead belonged to Hezbollah. The group issued a statement confirming at least two members were killed in the pager bombings. One of them was the son of a Hezbollah member in Parliament, according to the Hezbollah official who spoke anonymously. The group later issued announcements that six other members were killed Tuesday, though it did not specify how.<\/p>\n

‘Mossad responsible for explosions’<\/h2>\n

\u201cWe hold the Israeli enemy fully responsible for this criminal aggression that also targeted civilians,\u201d Hezbollah said, adding that Israel will \u201cfor sure get its just punishment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Iranian state-run IRNA news agency said that the country\u2019s ambassador, Mojtaba Amani, was superficially wounded by an exploding pager and was being treated at a hospital.<\/p>\n

Previously, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah had warned the group\u2019s members not to carry cell phones, saying they could be used by Israel to track and target them.<\/p>\n

Sean Moorhouse, a former British Army officer and explosive ordnance disposal expert, said videos of the blasts suggested a small explosive charge \u2014 as small as a pencil eraser \u2014 had been placed into the devices. They would have had to have been rigged prior to delivery, very likely by Mossad, Israel\u2019s foreign intelligence agency, he said.<\/p>\n

Elijah J. Magnier, a Brussels-based senior political risk analyst, said he spoke with Hezbollah members who had examined pagers that failed to explode. What triggered the blasts, he said, appeared to be an error message sent to all the devices that caused them to vibrate, forcing the user to click on the buttons to stop the vibration.<\/p>\n

The combination detonated a small amount of explosives hidden inside and ensured that the user was present when the blast went off, he said.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, Israel said that halting Hezbollah\u2019s attacks in the north to allow residents to return to their homes is now\u00a0an official war goal. Israeli Defense Minister Gallant said the focus of the conflict is shifting from Gaza to Israel\u2019s north and that time is running out for a diplomatic solution with Hezbollah.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BEIRUT (AP): Pagers used by hundreds of members of the\u00a0Hezbollah\u00a0exploded near-simultaneously Tuesday in Lebanon and Syria, killing at least nine people, including an 8-year-old girl, and wounding several thousand, officials said. Hezbollah and the Lebanese government blamed Israel for what appeared to be a sophisticated remote attack. An American official said Israel briefed the United […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":48918,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13446,3],"tags":[21869],"class_list":["post-48899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-world","tag-lebanon-pager-explosions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48899"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48899\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48919,"href":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48899\/revisions\/48919"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}