Lebanon’s Health Minister confirmed a series of explosions across the country which lead to deaths of at least eight people and injuring 2,750 others. The blasts were caused by exploding handheld pagers. Health Minister Firaas Abiad further informed that over 200 people are in critical condition after the communication devices exploded on Tuesday. He also added that the victims are receiving treatment in over 150 hospitals.
Earlier in a statement on Tuesday, Hezbollah said that pagers belonging to employees of many Hezbollah units and institutions exploded, killing two of its fighters and a girl. The group further said that it was probing to determine the causes of the explosions.
A Hezbollah official described the explosion of handheld pagers as the organisation’s biggest security breach in nearly a year. No official statement has been released by the Israeli military regarding the explosions in Lebanon. According to the media reports, some 1,000 Hezbollah operatives so far have been injured by exploding pagers and radios. According to the media reports, ‘Hezbollah figures in Syria were also injured in the simultaneous blasts. Also injured was Iran’s Ambassador to Lebanon, Mojtaba Amani’.
Notably, on Monday night, Israel’s Security Cabinet updated its official war goals to include the secure return of 60,000 evacuated northern residents to their homes. Israel’s three other official war goals are the removal of Hamas’s military and governing capabilities, the return of all hostages, and ensuring that Gaza no longer poses a threat to Israel. At least 1,200 people were killed, and 252 Israelis and foreigners were taken hostage in Hamas’s attacks on Israeli communities near the Gaza border on October 7. Of the 97 remaining hostages, more than 30 have been declared dead. Hamas has also been holding captive two Israeli civilains since 2014 and 2015, and the bodies of two soldiers killed in 2014.
The Russia-born, United States based security expert Dmitri Alperovitch said on X that the explosions would make the operation “perhaps one of the most extensive physical supply chain attacks in history”. Alperovitch is the chairman of Silverado Policy Accelerator, a geopolitics think tank in Washington, DC, and a co-founder and former chief technology officer of the Texas-based cybersecurity company CrowdStrike.
After the war in Gaza began in 2023, Hezbollah apparently warned its members to not use the mobile phones for fear that they could be tampered with by Israeli intelligence agents. Given the restriction, Hezbollah were using pagers to communicate.
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