For a second day, hand-held communication devices exploded across Lebanon and in the southern suburbs of the capital, Beirut, in an apparent attack on Hezbollah. At least 20 people were killed and 450 people were injured, according to the Lebanese health ministry.
Twenty people were killed and hundreds were wounded when walkie-talkies owned by Hezbollah members exploded across Lebanon on Wednesday afternoon, the second coordinated attack on the militant group involving booby-trapped devices in two days, according to Lebanese and Hezbollah officials.
The explosions raised the death toll in the two attacks to at least 32, a number of which Hezbollah confirmed as members. Roughly 3,000 other people have been confirmed to have been injured in the attacks since Tuesday afternoon, when thousands of pagers belonging to members of Hezbollah exploded, killing 12 people and maiming thousands more.
The attacks represented a major blow to Hezbollah, a militant group based in Lebanon and backed by Iran, and they sent Lebanon reeling. Hezbollah, as well as officials from the United States and other countries who were briefed on the matter, said that Israel was behind the blasts on Tuesday, which came after months of cross-border fighting between the two sides.
The deadly blasts ratcheted up fears of a major war between Israel and Hezbollah, which has fired thousands of missiles and drones at Israeli territory since October in solidarity with Hamas in Gaza. The Israeli military did not respond to a request for comment on Wednesday’s blasts and declined to comment on Tuesday’s.
But Yoav Gallant, the Israeli defense minister, said in a video statement on Wednesday night that Israel was “at the outset of a new period in this war.” Without mentioning the explosions in Lebanon, he said the “center of gravity” of Israel’s military efforts was “moving north,” as the country diverted “forces, resources, and energy” toward the threat posed by Hezbollah.
Here’s what else to know:
- Walkie-talkies: A Times analysis identified the devices involved in Wednesday’s attacks as a two-way radio, or walkie-talkie, the IC-V82, bearing the brand of the Japanese company Icom. It is unclear where Hezbollah purchased the devices. They were larger and heavier than the pagers that blew up across the country on Tuesday, and in some cases set off larger fires, suggesting that they may have held larger amounts of explosives.
- Blasts cause panic: The explosions on Wednesday caused panic at a funeral for two Hezbollah fighters, a paramedic and a child who had been killed in Tuesdays attacks. Mourners were urged to remove their batteries from their phones.
- The youngest victim: Mourners gathered in the village of Saraain for the funeral of 9-year-old Fatima Abdullah, who died on Tuesday in the pager attack. They chanted as they made their way through the cemetery: “They killed our child Fatima!”
- Covert operations: Israel has carried out a series of clandestine attacks against Iran and its allies as part of a yearslong shadow war. Israel assassinated Iran’s top nuclear scientist and deputy defense minister, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, in 2020 using an A.I.-assisted robot controlled remotely via satellite. In February, Israel blew up two major gas pipelines in Iran, disrupting service to several cities, and, in 2021, an Israeli hack of Iran’s oil ministry servers disrupted gasoline distribution nationwide.
