Exploding pagers in Lebanon kill at least 9

Sep 20, 2024, 04:14 am

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A Lebanese is holding a walkie-talkie that has removed its battery while attending a funeral in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Lebanon, on September 18, 2024. Funeral services were held for Lebanese who died after thousands of pagers exploded across Lebanon the day before./ Source: AFP, Yonhap News

Washington correspondent Ha Man-joo

At least nine people were killed and 2,750 others were wounded on Tuesday when the pagers they use to communicate exploded across Lebanon, Lebanese health officials said.

Hezbollah, a Lebanese militant group, blamed Israel for the spree of pager blasts, vowing retaliation.

Nine people, including an 8-year-old girl, were killed and about 2,750 were wounded, with nearly 200 of those injured were in critical condition, Lebanese Health Minister Firas Abiad said.

Hezbollah militants were among the dead, while Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon, Mojtaba Amani, suffered a superficial injury in Tuesday’s pager blasts. Health authorities said many of the victims had injuries to their faces, including the eyes, hands, and abdomen.

The explosion occurred in the Iran-backed group’s Beirut and south Lebanon strongholds, according to AP and other sources.

The pagers, which went off simultaneously, had branding consistent with pagers made by Gold Apollo, a Taiwanese pager manufacturing firm and was introduced by Hezbollah several months ago, according to Reuters and other media outlets. Western officials believe Israel put a small amount of explosives into the pagers. The operation targeted hundreds of pagers used by Hezbollah members for years, and the use of pagers has spread more widely since October 7 last year, when Hezbollah’s supreme leader Hassan Nasrallah warned that Israeli government agencies had infiltrated mobile phone networks, the New York Times (NYT) quoted three Lebanese officials and security experts.

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported that many of the exploded pagers were newly delivered to Hezbollah in recent days, citing people familiar with the incident.

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