Hezbollah vows to retaliate against Israel over pager explosions

Militants say they will continue attacks near Lebanon’s border with Israel after sabotage of communications devices killed 12

Hezbollah has vowed to retaliate against Israel for a sophisticated and coordinated attack that detonated thousands of pagers carried by Lebanese militia members, plunging Beirut into widespread panic. Twelve people, including two children, were killed and up to 2,800 were wounded in the apparent sabotage of the low-tech systems the group uses to evade Israeli surveillance and assassination attempts, Lebanon’s health ministry said on Wednesday. Hezbollah said 10 of its members were killed.

The group said it would continue its attacks along the southern border with Israel, which has raised fears of a wider regional conflict, but vowed to separately avenge the pager blasts. “This is another reckoning [para Israel] and he will come, God willing,” he said on Wednesday.

The blasts took place in several areas of Lebanon, including the capital Beirut, the southern city of Tyre and the western region of Hermel, as well as in parts of Syria. Images circulated on social media showing explosions and people with bloodied pockets, ears or faces being taken to hospital.

The Israeli military declined to comment, but the explosions will heighten tensions between two forces that have been engaged in intensified border clashes for nearly a year.

Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, the UN special coordinator for Lebanon, called the attack an “extremely worrying escalation” and urged all parties “to refrain from any bellicose action or rhetoric that could trigger a wider conflagration that no one can afford.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held consultations with his top security chiefs on Tuesday evening, including Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, in Tel Aviv.

Hezbollah said that on Tuesday afternoon “many” pagers belonging to people working in its “different units and institutions exploded.”

Iran’s ambassador to Beirut, Mojtaba Amani, was among the injured, an Iranian official told the Financial Times, adding that “his general condition is good.” Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi “strongly condemned the terrorist attack by the Zionist regime” in a call with his Lebanese counterpart, Iran’s foreign ministry said.

Relatives of the injured gathered on a street outside the American University Hospital in central Beirut. Ali, an elderly man, said his grandnephew was a Hezbollah member and was wounded in the leg when his pager went off. “No family member could see him,” he said.

Images from the blast site showed the remains of a pager with markings identifiable to Gold Apollo Systems, a Taiwan-based company. Gold Apollo denied on Wednesday that it made the pagers used in the attack and said the model was manufactured under license by a company it identified as Budapest-based BAC Consulting.

“Under the agreement, we have authorized BAC to use our trademark for sales of products in specific regions, but the design and manufacturing of the products are entirely managed by BAC,” Gold Apollo said.

Taiwan prosecutors have opened an investigation into the origin of the pagers and the possible involvement of Gold Apollo. The Shilin prosecutors’ office said a department that handles national security cases is investigating the case.

Taiwan’s economic affairs ministry said there was no record of direct shipments of Gold Apollo pagers to Lebanon in the past two years, according to its export statistics. “The company exported 40,929 units between January and August this year. The main export destinations were the European and American markets,” the ministry said.

The United States has said it had no prior knowledge of the attack and played no operational or intelligence role in the blasts. State Department spokesman Matt Miller declined to comment on who was behind the explosions and added that it was “too early to say” how they would affect Gaza cease-fire negotiations.

Several foreign airlines, including Lufthansa and Air France, said late Tuesday that they were suspending flights to and from Tel Aviv for the next few days.

Hezbollah has resorted to low-tech communications after Israel stepped up assassinations of its senior commanders. The enemies began exchanging fire across the border after Hamas’s attack on Israel on Oct. 7.

In the past 11 months, Israeli strikes have killed about 470 people in Lebanon, most of them Hezbollah fighters, while the group’s attacks on Israel have killed more than 40 people.

This year, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah implored his fighters to give up their smartphones to avoid surveillance, prompting many to switch to older technologies such as pagers, landlines and human messengers.

Tuesday’s explosions in Lebanon came after what Israel said was a failed assassination attempt by Hezbollah on a former senior official in Israel’s security establishment.

On Tuesday, Netanyahu’s security cabinet expanded the goals of Israel’s nearly year-long campaign against Hamas in Gaza to include securing the northern front against Hezbollah.

The cabinet voted to include “the safe return of residents of the north to their homes,” referring to more than 60,000 Israelis who have been displaced by clashes on the border between Israel and Lebanon. The fighting has also forced some 100,000 Lebanese to flee their homes in the border region.

The security cabinet’s decision was seen by analysts as a shift in the Israel Defense Forces’ priorities, raising fears that the clashes between Hezbollah and Israel could escalate into a full-scale war.

With information from the Financial Times*