After hundreds of pagers exploded across Lebanon, the wounded were rushed to hospitals in ambulances, like this one in Beirut, on Tuesday.
Credit...Hassan Ammar/Associated Press

Exploding Pagers Targeting Hezbollah Kill 11 and Wound Thousands

The Iranian-backed militant group, which uses pagers to safeguard communications, blamed Israel for the attacks in Lebanon. Israel declined to comment.

by · NY Times

Hundreds of pagers carried by Hezbollah members exploded simultaneously across Lebanon on Tuesday, a day after Israeli officials said they were ready to step up attacks against the Iranian-backed militia.

The pagers exploded on sidewalks and in grocery stores, at homes and inside cars, killing at least 11 people and wounding at least 2,700 others, officials said. Witnesses reported smoke coming from pants pockets before loud bangs knocked people off their feet. Hezbollah said at least eight of its fighters had been killed.

Lebanon’s health minister, Firass Abiad, said that one of those killed was an 8-year-old girl and that many victims had maimed hands and injured eyes. The health ministry put hospitals on “maximum alert,” and asked citizens to throw out their pagers.

Hezbollah has used pagers for years to make it harder for messages to be intercepted. At 3:30 p.m., the pagers received a message that appeared as though it was coming from Hezbollah’s leadership, according to two officials familiar with the attack. The pagers beeped for several seconds before exploding.

The blasts appeared to be the latest salvo in a conflict between Israel and Hezbollah that escalated after Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, and Hezbollah, its ally, began firing rockets into northern Israel in support. Both militant groups are backed by Iran.

Although Israeli officials neither claimed nor denied responsibility for the explosions, Israel has a long history of sophisticated sabotage and assassination operations against its adversaries.

According to American and other officials briefed on the attack, Israel hid explosive material in a shipment of Taiwanese-made pagers imported into Lebanon.

The explosive material, as little as one or two ounces, was inserted next to the battery in each pager, two of the officials said. The pagers, which Hezbollah had ordered from the Gold Apollo company in Taiwan, had been tampered with before they reached Lebanon, according to some of the officials. According to one official, Israel calculated that the risk of harming people not affiliated with Hezbollah was low, given the size of the explosive.

Over 3,000 pagers were ordered from Gold Apollo, the officials said. Hezbollah distributed the pagers to its members throughout Lebanon, with some reaching the group’s allies in Iran and Syria, the officials said.

In Syria, the exploding pagers injured at least 14 people, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based monitor.

Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister, Najib Mikati, condemned what he characterized as “criminal Israeli aggression” and called it a “serious violation of Lebanese sovereignty.”

Hezbollah also blamed Israel and warned that there would be “punishment for this blatant aggression.”

The Israeli military declined to comment, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

Among those wounded was Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon, Mojtaba Amini, whose pager exploded, injuring his hand and face, according to Iranian state media reports. Mr. Amini was taken to a hospital in Beirut for treatment, and he was expected to recover, Iranian state television reported.

The pagers exploded a day after a senior Biden administration official, Amos Hochstein, met in Tel Aviv with Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, in an effort to prevent Israel’s conflict with Hezbollah from escalating into an all-out war.

In a statement after the meeting, Mr. Gallant said he had told Mr. Hochstein that the window for reaching a diplomatic solution was closing because Hezbollah had decided to “tie itself” to Hamas.

“The only way left to return the residents of the north to their homes is via military action,” Mr. Gallant said.

Matthew Miller, a State Department spokesman, said on Tuesday that the United States was “not involved” in the attack in Lebanon, and that it had not received any advance notice about it. “At this point, we are gathering information,” Mr. Miller said.

The blasts came as international efforts to negotiate a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip have stalled, and diplomats have been unable to lower tensions between Israel and Hezbollah.

Mr. Miller said the Biden administration’s message “to both Israel and to other parties” remained that they should seek a “diplomatic resolution.”

Lebanon’s foreign minister, Abdallah Bou Habib, said his country was bracing for Hezbollah’s response. “Hezbollah are definitely going to retaliate in a big way,” he said in a phone call with The New York Times. “How? Where? I don’t know.”

In Israel, Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, the chief of staff, held a security briefing with other senior generals Tuesday evening, the military said in a statement. The officers reviewed “preparation for defensive and offensive operations on all fronts,” according to the statement. While no new defensive guidelines have been issued for Israeli civilians, the military said Israelis should continue exercising “alertness.”

Mr. Bou Habib said that the Lebanese government was preparing to lodge a complaint at the U.N. Security Council. A United Nations spokesman, Stéphane Dujarric, said the developments in Lebanon were “extremely concerning,” given the volatile situation in the region.

“We deplore the civilian casualties that we have seen,” Mr. Dujarric said. “We cannot underscore enough the risks of escalation in Lebanon and in the region.”

The Lebanese Red Cross said that dozens of ambulances had responded to “multiple bombings” in southern and eastern Lebanon, as well as in Beirut, the capital. Lebanese security officials asked people to clear the roads so that victims could be rushed to hospitals.

Residents of Beirut’s southern suburbs, where many of the explosions took place, described chaos.

Mohammed Awada, 52, said he and his son had been driving alongside a man whose pager exploded. “My son went crazy and started to scream when he saw the man’s hand flying away from him,” he said. “It was like a firework.”

Another witness, Ahmad Ayoud, said he was in his butcher shop in Beirut when he heard what sounded like a gunshot and saw a man in his 20s on a motorbike fall to the ground. “We all thought he got wounded from a random shooting,” Mr. Ahmad said.

Although Hezbollah members have used pagers for years, the practice became more widespread after the group’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, warned in a speech in February that Israeli operatives could be using members’ cellphones to spy on them. He encouraged Hezbollah members to break or bury their phones.

As a result, thousands of rank-and-file members of Hezbollah — and not just fighters — switched to a new system of wireless paging devices, said Amer Al Sabaileh, a regional security expert and university professor based in Amman, Jordan. He said his information was based on extensive contacts in Lebanese political and security circles.

Mr. Sabaileh said that the explosions were a psychological blow for Hezbollah because they showed Israel’s capacity to strike anyone connected with the group as they went about their daily business.

Israel has a long history of using technology to carry out covert operations against Iran and Iranian-backed groups.

In 2020, Israel assassinated Iran’s top nuclear scientist and deputy defense minister, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, using an A.I.-assisted robot controlled remotely via satellite. The following year, an Israeli hack of servers belonging to Iran’s oil ministry disrupted gasoline distribution nationwide. And in February, Israel blew up two major gas pipelines in Iran, disrupting service to several cities.

In 1996, an exploding cellphone killed a Palestinian bomb maker in the Gaza Strip, in an attack widely attributed to Shin Bet, Israel’s security service. In July, a bomb planted in a guesthouse in Tehran killed Hamas’s political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, hours after he attended the inauguration of the country’s new president.

Reporting was contributed by Farnaz Fassihi, Matthew Mpoke Bigg, Anushka Patil, Hwaida Saad, Aaron Boxerman, Gabby Sobelman and Johnatan Reiss.

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