By Guardian - W. Christou/L. Tondo/A. Roth-Tue 17 Sep 2024

Hezbollah has vowed to retaliate against Israel after pagers used by its members exploded across Lebanon simultaneously, killing at least nine people and wounding almost 3,000 in a dramatic and unprecedented attack at a time of heightened tensions in the Middle East.

• What we know about the Hezbollah pager explosions

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military on the blasts, which came just hours after Israel announced it was broadening its aims in the war sparked by the Hamas attacks on 7 October to include its fight against Hezbollah along the border with Lebanon.

Exploding pager attack in Lebanon is another blow for US peace hopesRead more

Israel yet to make statement about detonations across Lebanon that killed a 10-year-old girl and left 400 in a reported critical condition

Lebanon’s health minister, Firass Abiad, said the blasts on Tuesday killed a 10-year-old girl, among others. He told a press conference: “About 2,750 people were injured … more than 200 of them critically,” with injuries mostly reported to the face, hands and stomach.

The apparent sabotage attack followed months of targeted assassinations by Israel against senior Hezbollah leaders. It came as US officials try to de-escalate tensions between the two sides and remain concerned that Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, could order a ground invasion of Lebanon. It threatens to derail efforts by the US to prevent Iran, which backs the Lebanese Shia militia, from retaliating against Israel for the July bombing in Tehran that killed the Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh.

The blasts appeared to exploit the low-tech pagers that Hezbollah has adopted in order to prevent the targeted assassinations of its members, who could be tracked by mobile phone signals. Those wounded in the attack include Iran’s ambassador to Beirut, Mojtaba Amani, according to reports.

It also ratcheted up tensions between Israel and Hezbollah, interrupting an uneasy calm which had prevailed over the last three weeks when both parties had appeared to step back from the brink of a regional war after a limited Hezbollah response in late August to Israel’s assassination of its top military commander, Fuad Shukur, in Beirut.

Lebanon’s information minister called the explosions an act of “Israeli aggression”.

Hezbollah said two of its fighters were among the dead and threatened a “just punishment” for Israel. Later media reports said the son of the Hezbollah MP Ali Ammar also died in the explosions.

Hezbollah fighters in Syria were also injured in the attack, with several being treated in hospitals in Damascus, according to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards-affiliated Saberin News reported that some guards in Syria had also been killed.

The US state department spokesperson, Matthew Miller, said it was “too early to say” how it would affect Gaza ceasefire talks. He told a briefing the US was not involved and did not know who was responsible. Hamas described the attack as an “escalation” that would lead to Israel’s defeat.

Israeli media reports on Tuesday evening said Netanyahu, the defence minister, Yoav Gallant, and other security chiefs had been huddling at the defence ministry headquarters at the Kirya base in Tel Aviv after the blasts. The Israeli military said senior commanders had held a situational assessment “focusing on readiness in both offence and defence in all arenas” but there was no change in instructions to civilians.

The Israel Defense Forces’ home front command told local authorities there was a possibility of an escalation after the incident.

A Hezbollah source said they believed the attack was in response to an alleged assassination attempt by the Shia militia on a former top Israeli defence official, revealed on Tuesday by the Israeli Shin Bet security agency.

It accused Hezbollah of attempting to kill a former security official using a claymore anti-personnel mine that could be detonated remotely, publishing photos of a dismantled bomb and wiring wrapped in tape that it claimed showed the attack was prevented in its “final stages”. Hezbollah has not commented on the alleged assassination attempt.

The attack was the third time Beirut had been targeted since the beginning of hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah on 8 October. The Lebanese militia had launched rockets at Israel the day before, “in solidarity” with Hamas’s attack on southern Israel, which began the current Gaza war.

Hospitals across Lebanon were overwhelmed with an influx of patients, and a field hospital was set up in the southern city of Tyre to accommodate the wounded. The sound of ambulance sirens was constant in Lebanon’s capital city more than three hours after the initial attack.

Videos of patients, including children, with mangled hands, gaping wounds in their sides and bandaged heads circulated on Lebanese social media. A doctor in Beirut’s Geitawi hospital said the emergency room was tending “several critical patients”.

A senior security source said pagers all over the country exploded, primarily wounding members of Hezbollah. They added that security agencies would investigate how the sophisticated attack was carried out, but that forces were currently occupied ensuring wounded people could reach hospitals.

A Hezbollah official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters the detonation of the pagers was the “biggest security breach” the group had been subjected to in nearly a year of war with Israel.

Lebanon’s health ministry put hospitals across the country on “maximum alert” and instructed citizens to distance themselves from wireless communication devices.

Hezbollah maintains its own communication network separate from the rest of Lebanon. Suspicions that Israel has managed to penetrate the group’s telecommunications have been held since October, as several Hezbollah commanders have been assassinated in targeted strikes.

Yossi Melman, a co-author of Spies Against Armageddon and other books on Israeli intelligence, said: “This absolutely has all the hallmarks of a Mossad operation. Somebody has planted minor explosives or malware inside the pagers. I understand they were recently supplied as well.”

Melman said he understood that “a lot of people in Hezbollah carried these pagers, not just top echelon commanders”. They were used by the Lebanese group because they feared their mobile phones were being monitored by Israeli intelligence to surveil their communications and to pinpoint missile attacks.

The exercise showed, he said, that “[the] Mossad is able to penetrate and infiltrate Hezbollah time and time again” but he questioned whether there was any strategic gain to the coordinated explosions. “It won’t change the situation on the ground, and I don’t see any advance in it.”

The incident came as the Israeli prime minister was holding a series of high-level security consultations with the heads of the security forces amid rising tensions with Hezbollah, according to Israeli media reports.

The consultations were called a few hours after Israel, during an overnight meeting of the security cabinet on Tuesday, approved the decision to expand its war goals to include the return of tens of thousands of Israelis evacuated from towns along the northern frontier that have been badly damaged by rockets fired by Hezbollah – a move that suggests a large-scale military operation against the Lebanese militant group is likely.

Hezbollah officials have said in the past that the group would stand down if a Gaza ceasefire was reached, while Israel says it cannot allow militants to remain in the border area in southern Lebanon.

The violence has killed hundreds – mostly fighters – in Lebanon, and dozens of civilians and soldiers on the Israeli side. The fighting has also forced tens of thousands of people on both sides to flee their homes.

In recent days, according to media reports in the country, Netanyahu has been allegedly considering dismissing Gallant as defence minister. The move would be the biggest leadership shake-up in the country since the 7 October attacks, and could pave the way to an all-out conflict against Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Gallant is believed to have consistently opposed a big military operation in Lebanon while the fighting is continuing against Hamas in Gaza, West Bank violence and military activities are escalating, and Israel is fighting off Houthi missile attacks and dealing with Iran’s nuclear ambitions and threats.

Additional reporting by Dan Sabbagh