Beirut : Hand-held radios used by Lebanese armed group Hezbollah detonated on Wednesday across Lebanon’s south and in Beirut suburbs, further stoking tensions with Israel a day after similar explosions were launched via the group’s pagers.
Lebanon’s health ministry said 14 people had been killed and 450 injured on Wednesday, while the death toll from Tuesday’s explosions rose to 12, including two children, with nearly 3,000 injured.
At least one of Wednesday’s 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 its fighters.
A Reuters reporter in the southern suburbs of Beirut said he saw Hezbollah members frantically taking out the batteries of any walkie-talkies on them that had not exploded, tossing the parts in metal barrels around them.
Lebanon’s Red Cross said on X that it was responding with 30 ambulance teams to multiple explosions in different areas, including the south of Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley.
Hezbollah, 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 the blasts wounded thousands of its members in Lebanon and raised the prospect of a wider Middle East war.
The hand-held radios were purchased by Hezbollah five months ago, around the same time that the pagers were bought, said a security source.
Israel’s Mossad spy agency planted explosives inside 5,000 pagers imported by Hezbollah months before Tuesday’s detonations, a senior Lebanese security source, and another source told Reuters.