Nine people were killed in Lebanon on Tuesday and 2,750 were wounded, the Lebanese Health Ministry announced, after pagers used by Hezbollah members detonated throughout the country in a likely Israeli attack.
400 of the casualties were in critical condition, advisor to Lebanon’s health minister Bassem Ghanem told Reuters, in an apparent major blow to the Iran-backed group which is set to ratchet up already flaring regional tensions.
Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon Mojtaba Amani was among the wounded but suffered non-life-threatening injuries, Iran’s state-run news outlets said. Unconfirmed reports in Tehran said his eyes were "severely injured" in the attack.
Hezbollah, which has been locked in escalating cross-border combat with its southern neighbor for almost a year, blamed Israel for the attack and vowed retaliation.
"We hold the Israeli enemy fully responsible for this criminal aggression ... This treacherous and criminal enemy will certainly receive its just punishment for this sinful aggression", the Iranian-backed group said in a statement.
The attack was a result of a joint operation between Israel’s Mossad, and the Israeli military, CNN reported Tuesday. Israel placed explosive material in a batch of Taiwanese-made pagers which were imported into Lebanon and destined for Hezbollah, the New York Times reported, citing American and other officials briefed on the operation.
"Over 3,000 pagers were ordered from the Gold Apollo company in Taiwan... Hezbollah distributed the pagers to their members throughout Lebanon, with some reaching Hezbollah allies in Iran and Syria," The New York Times reported citing officials. "Israel’s attack affected the pagers that were switched on and receiving messages."
Israel has not yet commented on any role in the incident but has repeatedly assassinated adversaries in combat zones and beyond in the past.
Iran's foreign minister Abbas Araghchi condemned the explosions as an act of "Israeli terrorism".
The United States denied any involvement in the explosions and cautioned Iran against escalation.
“We would urge Iran not to take advantage of any incident to raise instability in the region,” state department spokesman Matthew Miller said.
It was not immediately clear how the pagers were detonated, and the apparent attack comes after Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah urged his fighters last year to ditch smart phones and adopt less traceable means of communication.
Unverified surveillance camera videos posted online by Lebanese users appeared to show detonations felling a man at an outdoor fruit market and in a supermarket checkout aisle.
Other footage showed what appeared to be a hospital ward crowded with wounded men and also the inside of a bedroom with a mirror and cupboard torn apart by a blast.
Fourteen people were also wounded in the Syrian capital Damascus and its outskirts in explosions around the same time, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported.
Hezbollah fighters have been a party to Syria's civil war for over a decade.
The explosions are expected to further fuel the conflict between Hezbollah and Israel that has rumbled since the group’s Palestinian allies Hamas attacked Israel on October 7.
Israel’s security cabinet on Monday upgraded the country’s war aims to include securing its Northern border, where Israeli and Lebanese communities have been evacuated for almost a year.
The Israeli military announced on Monday it had furnished border units with 9,000 new rifles and that it had foiled a suspected assassination attempt on an unnamed senior security official.
An explosive device found in Israel was equipped with a remote activation mechanism, a camera and cellular technology that enabled it to be activated by Hezbollah from Lebanon, the defense ministry said in a statement.