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Hezbollah vowed to respond after 11 people were killed and around 4,000 injured after the simultaneous explosion of hundreds of electronic pagers used by militias to communicate.
The group claimed the attack, which took place at 3:30 p.m. local time, was carried out by Israel, an accusation Israel refused to address, in line with its policy on attacks that occur outside its own territory.
Lebanese health minister Firas al-Abyad said eleven people were killed, including an eight-year-old girl, after fences exploded in Lebanon and in the Syrian capital of Damascus, where Hezbollah has stationed some of its members. Another 4,000 were injured, the minister said, including 400 critically injured.
The exploding fence appears to have been purchased by Hezbollah after the group’s leader ordered members in February to stop using cellphones, warning they could be tracked by Israeli intelligence.
“After reviewing all the facts, current data and available information about the sinful attack that took place this evening, we hold Israel’s enemies responsible for this criminal aggression that also targets civilians,” Hezbollah said in a statement Tuesday evening.
“This treacherous and criminal enemy will surely receive a just punishment for this sinful aggression from where he wants it and from where he doesn’t want it, and God is witness to what we say.”
The United States said it had no involvement in the blasts in Lebanon as it renewed calls for a diplomatic solution to tensions between Israel and Lebanon.
The United Nations special coordinator for Lebanon, Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, condemned the attack, describing it as “very much about escalation”.
He added that he “urged all concerned actors to take no further action…
A Hezbollah official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the detonation of the fence was “the biggest security violation” the group has been subjected to for nearly a year of war with Israel.
While the majority of the explosions were concentrated in the southern suburbs of Beirut, media sites linked to the Iranian military. Saberin News claimed seven people had been killed in Syria, where many Hezbollah members are based. The outlet said he was killed in the Damascus neighborhood of Seyedah Zeinab, a few miles from the Iranian embassy.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also reported that some victims had arrived at hospitals around Damascus. He said 14 people were injured.
The Independent could not directly verify the claim.
Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon, Mojtaba Amani, was injured by one of the blasts, Iran’s Mehr news agency reported.
Another Hezbollah official from the group said the son of one of its prominent legislators, Ali Ammar Mahdi, was killed when the device he was carrying exploded.
Mr al-Abyad, Lebanon’s health minister, speaking at an emergency press conference in Beirut, reported that around 100 hospitals had received victims from Tuesday’s attack. The majority of the injured suffered wounds to the face or arms, he added, and in some cases to the abdomen.
The explosive fence is the latest model brought by Hezbollah in recent months, three security sources said.
Hezbollah officials speculated that the device was contaminated with malware that caused the enclosure to overheat and explode. Another theory suggests that a charge had been manually placed on the device and detonated remotely. This would suggest that whoever carried out the attack had access to the paging post before it was sent to Hezbollah.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military, which has been exchanging fire with Hezbollah since last October in parallel with the war with Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip. In the subsequent statement to Independent, The Israeli military said they were “refraining from the comments”.
The blast came after Israel claimed to have killed Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr in an airstrike in Beirut in July. Several other senior officials were killed in an attack on the Iranian embassy in the Syrian capital of Damascus.
Hezbollah, which controls southern Lebanon, is part of Iran’s “axis of resistance,” which opposes Western and Israeli influence in the region.
The group opened a second front against Israel a day after the war in the Gaza Strip began, which was triggered by Hamas’ attack on Israel on October 7.
Hamas, also supported by Tehran, killed around 1,200 people, and captured another 251. In response, Israel has bombarded Gaza from the air and ground.
More than 41,000 Palestinians were killed in the attack, health officials said on the trail. It has displaced nearly 90 percent of the region’s 2.3 million population.
On Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said the safe return of residents to their homes near the border with Lebanon had been added to the government’s official war goals.
“The Security Cabinet has updated its war objectives to include the following: Return the citizens of the north to their homes safely. Israel will continue to act to implement these objectives,” the statement said.
Tens of thousands of people have been displaced from towns and villages on both sides of the border by daily exchanges between the Israeli military and Hezbollah.
Israel says it prefers a diplomatic solution that would see Hezbollah withdraw from the border.
However, Hezbollah, which has also said it wants to avoid conflict altogether, says that only an end to the fighting in Gaza will end the war.
Gaza ceasefire efforts stalled after months of talks brokered by Qatar, Egypt and the United States.
The “axis of resistance” includes violent proxy groups in Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Lebanon and Palestine, coordinated by Iran’s Quds Force, the foreign arm of the IRGC.
The purpose of the Quds Force was to export Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution abroad. The US killed the former head of the Quds Force, Qassem Solemaini, in January 2020. Hezbollah, the most powerful group in the axis, has 100,000 fighters.
