Hand-held radios used by the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah exploded on Wednesday in southern Lebanon, sparking further tensions with Israel, a day after similar blasts hit the group’s pagers.
Lebanon’s health ministry said 14 people were killed and about 450 wounded on Wednesday in the suburbs of Beirut and the Bekaa Valley, while the death toll from Tuesday’s blasts rose to 12, including two children, with nearly 3,000 injured.
Israeli officials have not commented on the blasts, but security sources said Israel’s Mossad spy agency was responsible. A Hezbollah official said the episode was the biggest security breach in the group’s history.
The operations, which appeared to throw Hezbollah into disarray, came alongside Israel’s 11-month war on Gaza and heightened fears of an escalation on its border with Lebanon and the risk of a full-scale regional war.
“We are opening a new phase in the war. It requires courage, determination and perseverance from us,” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said in remarks at an air force base.
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 several fronts.
The US, which has denied any involvement in the explosions, said it was engaged in intensive diplomacy to prevent an escalation of the conflict.
At least one of Wednesday’s explosions in Lebanon took place near a funeral held by Iran-backed Hezbollah for those killed the day before, when thousands of the group’s pagers exploded across the country and wounded many of its fighters.
A Reuters reporter in Beirut’s southern suburbs said he saw Hezbollah members frantically removing batteries from unexploded walkie-talkies, throwing the parts into metal barrels. Hezbollah has turned to pagers and other low-tech communication devices in an effort to avoid Israeli surveillance of cellphones.
The Lebanese Red Cross told X that it was responding with 30 ambulance teams to multiple explosions in various areas, including southern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley.
Images of the exploding radios showed labels with “ICOM” and “made in Japan”. ICOM, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment, is a Japan-based radio and telecommunications company, according to its website.
The company said that production of the IC-V82 model, which appeared to be the model in the images, was phased out in 2014.
The portable radios were purchased by Hezbollah five months ago, around the same time as the pagers, a security source said.
In Tuesday’s blasts, sources said Israeli spies remotely detonated explosives they had ordered placed on 5,000 Hezbollah pagers before they entered the country.
The United Nations Security Council will meet Friday on the pager blasts at the request of Arab states. Iran will follow up on an attack targeting its ambassador in Lebanon, the Iranian envoy to the United Nations said in a letter, saying it “reserves its rights under international law to take the required measures deemed necessary to respond.” .
Hezbollah fires rockets
Hezbollah has vowed to strike back against Israel. It said on Wednesday it attacked Israeli artillery positions with rockets, the first strike on its arch-enemy since the blasts. The Israeli military said there were no reports of damage or casualties.
The two sides have been fighting across Lebanon’s border since the Gaza conflict erupted in October, fueling fears of a wider Middle East war that could draw in the United States and Iran.
“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, deputy director of research. at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut.
Gallant said Israel, which has vowed to return evacuated residents to their homes in the north, is moving troops and resources to the Lebanese border region. Israeli sources said this included the army’s 98th Division, which has formations of commandos and paratroopers, moving from Gaza to the north.
“The ‘center of gravity’ is moving north, which means we have forces, resources and energy for the northern arena,” Gallant said in statements released by his office.
A full-scale war with Israel could devastate Lebanon, which has lurched from one crisis to another, including an economic collapse in 2019 and an explosion at the port of Beirut in 2020.
Rising tensions may also complicate so far unsuccessful efforts by Egyptian, Qatari and US mediators to broker a Gaza truce between Israel and the militant group Hamas, an ally of Hezbollah that is also backed by Iran.
White House National Security Press Secretary John Kirby said Wednesday that it was too early to assess the impact of the explosions on the ceasefire talks. Hezbollah, Iran’s strongest proxy in the Middle East, said in a statement that it would continue to support Hamas in Gaza and that Israel should wait for a response to the “massacre” of the pagers.
A Hamas delegation visited people injured in the blasts at Lebanese hospitals on Wednesday, Lebanon’s state-run NNA news agency reported.
The blasts followed a series of assassinations of Hezbollah and Hamas commanders and leaders attributed to Israel since the start of the Gaza war.
