BEIRUT - Hundreds more people were wounded on Wednesday in fresh blasts involving handheld radios used by Hezbollah, further stoking tensions with Israel a day after similar explosions launched via the group’s pagers.
Three people were killed in the Bekaa region, the state news agency reported. Many of those wounded had injuries to the stomach and hands, a security source said.
The radios detonated across the south of the country and in Beirut’s southern suburbs, a security source and a witness said.
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 the group’s fighters.
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 blasts wounded thousands of its members in Lebanon and raised the prospect of a wider Middle East war.
The handheld radios were purchased by Hezbollah five months ago, around the same time that the pagers were bought, said a security source.
The Israeli spy agency Mossad, which has a long history of sophisticated operations on foreign soil, planted explosives inside pagers imported by Hezbollah months before Tuesday’s detonations, a senior Lebanese security source and another source told Reuters.
The death toll from Tuesday’s blasts rose to 12, including two children, Lebanese Health Minister Firass Abiad said on Wednesday. Tuesday’s attack wounded nearly 3,000 people, including many of the militant group’s fighters and Iran’s envoy to Beirut.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk called for an independent investigation into the events surrounding exploding pagers.
A Taiwanese pager maker denied that it had produced the pager devices that exploded in an audacious attack that raised the prospect of a full-scale war between Iran-backed Hezbollah and Israel.
Gold Apollo said the devices were made under licence by a company called BAC, based in Budapest, Hungary.
Retaliation
There was no immediate word on when Hezbollah had launched its latest rocket attack but normally the group announces such strikes shortly after carrying them out, suggesting it fired at the Israeli artillery positions on Wednesday.
Hezbollah has vowed to retaliate against Israel, whose military declined to comment on the blasts. The two sides have been engaged in cross-border warfare since the Gaza conflict erupted last October, fuelling fears of a wider Middle East conflict that could drag in the United States and Iran.
Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi accused Israel of pushing the Middle East to the brink of a regional war by orchestrating a dangerous escalation on many fronts.
“Hezbollah wants to avoid an all-out war. It still wants to avoid one. But given the scale, the impact on families, on civilians, there will be pressure for a stronger response,” said Mohanad Hage Ali of the Carnegie Middle East Center.
Hezbollah, Iran’s most powerful proxy in the Middle East, said in a statement it would continue to support Hamas in Gaza and Israel should await a response to the pager “massacre” which left fighters and others bloodied, hospitalised or dead.
One Hezbollah official said the detonation was the group’s “biggest security breach” in its history.
Video from hospitals reviewed by Reuters showed men with various injuries, some to the face, some with missing fingers and gaping wounds at the hip where the pagers were likely worn.
The plot appears to have been many months in the making, several sources told Reuters. It followed a series of assassinations of Hezbollah and Hamas commanders and leaders blamed on Israel since the start of the Gaza war.
