14 killed in new Hezbollah device blasts

BEIRUT:

A second wave of device explosions killed at least 14 people and wounded more than 450 in Hezbollah strongholds in Lebanon on Wednesday, officials said, stoking fears of an all-out war in the region.

A source close to Hezbollah said walkie-talkies used by its members blew up in its Beirut stronghold, with state media reporting similar blasts in south and east Lebanon.

AFPTV footage showed people running for cover when an explosion went off during a funeral for Hezbollah fighters in south Beirut in the afternoon.

Nine people were killed and more than 100 wounded in the latest attacks, the health ministry said, also describing the devices targeted as walkie-talkies.

It came a day after the simultaneous explosion of hundreds of paging devices used by Hezbollah killed 12 people, including two children, and wounded up to 2,800 others across Lebanon, in an unprecedented attack blamed on Israel.

There was no comment from Israel, which only hours before Tuesday's attacks had announced it was broadening the aims of its war with Hamas in Gaza to include its fight against the Palestinian group's ally Hezbollah.

"The centre of gravity is moving northward -- resources are being allocated (to this front)," Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said during a visit to an air base on Wednesday. "We are at the start of a new phase in the war."

Israeli officials have remained tight-lipped about the explosions which led the television news bulletins on and dominated newspaper headlines.

Amos Harel of the left-leaning Haaretz newspaper said the pager and walkie-talkie blasts had put "Israel and Hezbollah on the brink of all-out war".

The Iran-backed Hezbollah has traded near-daily cross-border fire with Israeli forces since Hamas and other Palestinian militants attacked Israel on October 7, sparking the war in Gaza.

On Wednesday, Hezbollah said Israel was "fully responsible for this criminal aggression" and reiterated it would avenge the latest attack.

Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib warned the "blatant assault on Lebanon's sovereignty and security" was a dangerous development that could "signal a wider war".

The influx of so many casualties all at once overwhelmed hospitals in Hezbollah strongholds.

At a Beirut hospital, doctor Joelle Khadra said "the injuries were mainly to the eyes and hands, with finger amputations, shrapnel in the eyes -- some people lost their sight."

A doctor at another hospital in the Lebanese capital said he had worked through the night and that the injuries were "out of this world -- never seen anything like it".

Analysts said Israeli operatives had likely planted explosives on the paging devices before they were delivered to Hezbollah.

"This was more than lithium batteries being forced into override," said Charles Lister of the Middle East Institute.

"A small plastic explosive was almost certainly concealed alongside the battery, for remote detonation via a call or page," the analyst said, adding Israel's spy agency "Mossad infiltrated the supply chain".

Among the dead was the 10-year-old daughter of a Hezbollah member, killed in east Lebanon's Bekaa Valley when her father's pager exploded, the family and a source close to the group said.

Tehran's ambassador in Beirut, Mojataba Amani, who was injured, said on social media platform X that it was "a source of pride for me that my blood was mixed with that of the wounded Lebanese" in what he called a "horrific terrorist crime".

The attack dealt a heavy blow to the militant group, which already had concerns about the security of its communications after losing several key commanders to targeted air strikes in recent months.

The preliminary findings of a Lebanese investigation into the blasts found the pagers had been booby-trapped, a security official said.

"Data indicates the devices were pre-programmed to detonate and contained explosive materials planted next to the battery," the official said, requesting anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

A source close to Hezbollah, asking not to be identified, said the pagers were "recently imported" and appeared to have been "sabotaged at source".

After The New York Times reported the pagers had been ordered from Taiwanese manufacturer Gold Apollo, the company said they had been produced by its Hungarian partner BAC Consulting KFT.

A government spokesman in Budapest said the company was "a trading intermediary, with no manufacturing or operational site in Hungary".

As fears again surged of a regional conflagration nearly a year into the Gaza war, Lufthansa and Air France announced the suspension of flights to Tel Aviv, Tehran and Beirut until Thursday.

Since October, the unabating exchanges of fire between Israeli troops and Hezbollah have killed hundreds of mostly fighters in Lebanon, and dozens including soldiers on the Israeli side.

They have also forced tens of thousands of people on both sides of the border to flee their homes.

United Nations rights chief Volker Turk said Tuesday's attack had come at an "extremely volatile time", calling the blasts "shocking" and their impact on civilians "unacceptable".

UN chief Antonio Guterres urged governments "not to weaponise civilian objects".

The UN Security Council is to meet on Friday to discuss the blasts.

The October 7 attack that sparked the war resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians, on the Israeli side, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures which includes hostages killed in captivity.

Out of 251 hostages seized by militants, 97 are still held in Gaza, including 33 the Israeli military says are dead.

Israel's retaliatory military offensive has killed at least 41,272 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to data provided by the Hamas-run territory's health ministry. The UN has acknowledged these figures as reliable.

In Gaza on Wednesday, the civil defence agency said an Israeli air strike on a school-turned-shelter killed five people, while the Israeli military said it targeted Hamas militants.