Nine dead, 300 wounded in fresh pager attacks in Lebanon

BEIRUT: Exploding pagers used by Lebanon’s Hezbollah group have killed nine and injured at least 300 people across Lebanon, the country’s health ministry said.

The blasts come a day after pagers exploded across the country, killing 12 people, including two children, and injuring over 3,000.

Many of the wounds were to the stomach and hands, the source said.

Communications devices used by Lebanon’s armed group Hezbollah detonated late Wednesday afternoon across the country’s south and in the southern suburbs of the capital Beirut, a security source and a witness said.

Lebanon’s health ministry said the initial casualty toll was one person killed and more than 100 injured. Earlier the state news agency said three people had died.

At least one of the blasts took place near a funeral organised by Iran-backed Hezbollah for those killed the previous day when thousands of pagers used by the group exploded across the country and wounded many of its fighters.

A Reuters reporter in the southern suburbs of Beirut said he saw Hezbollah members frantically taking out the batteries of any walkie-talkies on them that had not exploded, tossing the parts in metal barrels around them.

Lebanon’s Red Cross said on X that it was responding with 30 ambulance teams to multiple explosions in different areas.

The group, which was thrown briefly into disarray by the pager attacks, said on Wednesday it had attacked Israeli artillery positions with rockets, the first strike at its arch-foe since the blasts wounded thousands of its members in Lebanon and raised the prospect of a wider Middle East war.

Earlier, Hezbollah vowed to retaliate Israel after the pager blasts in Hezbollah strongholds claimed nine lives and wounded nearly 3000.

Hezbollah switched to using pagers in recent months in an effort to avoid Israeli tracking of their locations. Explosives were hidden in the Gold Apollo pagers next to the battery. They were configured to be triggered remotely to detonate. Two Hezbollah fighters were also injured in Syria, where blasts occurred simultaneously.