Summary of the day
Pagers used by hundreds of members of the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah exploded simultaneously in Lebanon and Syria on Tuesday, killing at least nine people and wounding thousands in a dramatic and unprecedented attack at a time of heightened tensions in the Middle East.
Among those killed was an 10-year-old girl, according to Lebanon’s health minister, Firass Abiad. The latest casualty figures by officials include about 2,750 wounded, with most injuries to the face and hands. Those wounded include Iran’s ambassador to Beirut, Mojtaba Amani.
Hezbollah fighters in Syria were also injured in the attack, with several reportedly being treated in hospitals in Damascus. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards-affiliated Saberin News reported that some guards in Syria had also been killed.
The pager explosions across Lebanon marked “an extremely concerning escalation,” the UN’s special coordinator for Lebanon, Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, said. The spokesperson for the secretary general of the United Nations, Stéphane Dujarric, noted the “extremely volatile” context.
A Hezbollah official said the detonation of the pagers was the biggest security breach for the group in nearly a year of conflict with Israel. The blasts appeared to exploit the low-tech pagers that Hezbollah has adopted in order to prevent the targeted assassinations of its members. Lebanon’s foreign minister, Abdallah Bou Habib, said the country was bracing for a major retaliation by Hezbollah.
Hezbollah has vowed to retaliate against Israel. “We hold the Israeli enemy fully responsible for this criminal aggression that also targeted civilians,” a statement said. The son of the Hezbollah MP Ali Ammar reportedly also died in the explosions, as did two sons of other prominent Hezbollah figures.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military on the blasts. The attack took place just hours after Israel announced it was broadening the aims of the war sparked by the 7 October Hamas attacks to include its fight against Hezbollah.
Lebanon’s health ministry put hospitals across the country on “maximum alert” and instructed citizens to distance themselves from wireless communication devices. Schools in Lebanon will close on Wednesday.
The US government said it “was not aware of this incident in advance”. The state department spokesperson, Matthew Miller, told a briefing that Washington was not involved and did not know who was responsible. He added it was “too early to say” how it would affect Gaza ceasefire talks.
Israel’s domestic security agency said it had foiled a plot by Hezbollah to assassinate a former senior Israeli defence official in the coming days. The Shin Bet agency said it had seized an explosive device attached to a remote detonation system, using a mobile phone and a camera, that Hezbollah had planned to operate from Lebanon.
Israeli tanks fired on an aid convoy on a mission to northern Gaza at the weekend, the head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said. Shots were fired from two Israeli tanks near the WHO-led convoy, he said, adding that nobody was hurt during the incident.
Gaza’s health ministry has identified 34,344 Palestinians killed by Israeli attacks in the territory, publishing a list of names, ages, gender and ID numbers that cover more than 80% of those who have been killed in the war so far.
At least 41,252 Palestinian people have been killed and 95,497 injured in Israeli strikes on Gaza since 7 October, the Gaza health ministry said on Tuesday. The Palestinian education ministry said 11,001 students – from schools and universities – have been killed and 17,772 injured in the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank since 7 October 2023.
The EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, has urged for more pressure on Israel and Hamas for a ceasefire in Gaza, warning that every day that passes without a deal risks the lives of hostages and civilians – as well as a regional war breaking out.
Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is reportedly contemplating dismissing his defence minister, Yoav Gallant, and replacing him with Gideon Saar, a member of the opposition and the New Hope party leader.
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Updated
Most of the injuries from Tuesday’s pager explosions in Lebanon have been to the face and hands.
Most “appear to be to the face and especially to the eyes, and also the hand with some amputations, whether it’s in the hands or the fingers,” Lebanon’s public health minister Firass Abiad told the BBC.
The “vast majority” presenting to emergency rooms are in civilian clothes, Abiad told the broadcaster, adding that this makes it “very difficult to discern whether they belong to a certain entity like Hezbollah or others”. He added:
But we are seeing among them people who are old or people who are very young, like the child who unfortunately died, and there are some of them who are health care workers.
Abiad said the incident was a “major escalation at a time when everybody was hoping that things were moving to a kind of cessation of hostilities or some kind of ceasefire”, adding that Israel was the “obvious culprit”.
There has been no comment from the Israeli military on the blast.
