Hand-held walkie-talkies and other wireless communication devices used by Hizbollah were detonated across Lebanon on Wednesday, killing at least nine people and injuring more than 300 a day after thousands of pagers exploded in the country.
The fresh blasts compounded the shock in Lebanon from the initial, unprecedented attack via electronic devices on Tuesday, which Hizbollah blamed on Israel, vowing revenge. The militant group and Israel are already engaged in a war of attrition across the Israel-Lebanon border.
The latest deaths and injuries brought the toll from the two days of blasts to 21 dead, including at least two children, and more than 3,000 injured. Almost 300 of those wounded in Tuesday’s blasts remained in a critical condition on Wednesday.
Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant told troops on Wednesday that “we are at the start of a new phase in the war — it requires courage, determination and perseverance”.
“The centre of gravity is shifting to the north by diverting resources and forces,” he said, while praising the work of Israel’s army and security agencies. Israel has not commented directly on the blasts.
The fresh blasts came as the UN’s high commissioner for human rights, Volker Türk, said of the pager attacks that “the fear and terror unleashed is profound”. He urged world leaders to step up “in defence of the rights of all people to live in peace and security”.
Türk said the targeting of thousands of people, whether civilians or members of armed groups, without knowledge of who held the devices or their locations was a violation of international law.
Hizbollah and Israel have been engaged in cross-border fire since Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel. On Wednesday Hizbollah said it had launched rockets at Israeli artillery positions across the border, the first strike since Tuesday’s attack raised the prospect of a wider regional conflagration.
Asked about Tuesday’s explosions, US secretary of state Antony Blinken said on Wednesday in Cairo that he was focused on agreeing a ceasefire deal in Gaza that could also bring calm to the Israel-Lebanon border.
When the US and other mediators believed they were making progress on such a deal, Blinken said, they had often “seen an event that . . . threatens to slow it, stop it, derail it”.
Other explosions took place, including from hand-held radios, on Wednesday in southern Beirut, Tyre, Nabatiyeh, Hermel and the Bekaa Valley, as well as in scattered villages and towns in the south, according to NNA and emergency responders. The state news agency also said there was heavy Israeli surveillance drone traffic over the country’s south. These are all areas with a heavy Hizbollah presence.
Gruesome images circulated on social media for the second day running, showing fire-damaged cars and motorbikes, homes and shops ablaze, and bloodied people being rushed to hospitals in ambulances.
At least one explosion on Wednesday took place near a funeral in Beirut’s southern suburb of Ghobeiry for several of the people killed on Tuesday. Thousands of mourners had gathered for the funeral of a child, two Hizbollah members and a health worker killed in Tuesday’s blasts.
That funeral — already tense — was interrupted by a loud boom that echoed over the procession, sending mourners stampeding away in fear.
As ambulance sirens sounded, a man ran through the crowd shouting: “It exploded in his hand.” A Lebanese soldier stationed near the funeral, where weeping family members held up images of their slain relatives, said that “two devices had exploded”.
Additional reporting by Neri Zilber in Tel Aviv