Thousands have been injured and at least nine killed after handheld devices exploded en masse across Lebanon, and in some parts of Syria, in an apparent attack on Tuesday.
According to Lebanon’s health minister, Firas al-Abyad, at least 2,750 people have been wounded, while more than 200 are in critical condition. That count was preliminary, as the reported toll was rising rapidly shortly after the attack, which occurred on Tuesday afternoon local time.
One of the eight people killed was an 8-year-old girl. Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon, Mojtaba Amani, was reportedly minorly injured in the attack.
Hezbollah, a political bloc and armed group within Lebanon, has blamed Israel for the attack, noting that the attack targeted “pagers belonging to employees of various Hezbollah units and institutions.” In a statement, Hezbollah vowed “fair punishment for this blatant aggression.” Israel has not taken responsibility for the attack.
Tensions between Israel and Hezbollah have been high in recent months amid Israel’s genocide in Gaza, with the two groups exchanging strikes; Israel has been responsible for about 82 percent of these strikes.
Health officials are calling for blood donations as hospitals across the region, especially in southern Lebanon, are overwhelmed with patients. Al-Abyad said that many of the injuries are focused on the face and arm areas.
CCTV recordings from markets circulating online appear to show the handheld pagers exploding spontaneously.
According to reports citing Hezbollah officials, the devices were a new brand that had just been distributed by Hezbollah in recent months. One official told The Associated Press that the pagers heated up, and then exploded. Some experts have said that the attack was extremely sophisticated, and, if Israel is responsible, it may have required collaboration from a third country.
The attack came just hours after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office announced a new goal in its war on Lebanon of allowing Israeli residents who have fled the cross-border attacks to return to northern Israel, by halting Hezbollah’s strikes on the region.
One conflict analyst for the Omran Center for Strategic Studies, Navvar Saban, told Al Jazeera that the goal of the attack was to cause widespread terror.
“It’s thousands of assassination attempts at the same time that happened in different geographical areas. The psychological impact is huge. It’s going to affect Hezbollah,” Saban said. “It will terrify the area. It will terrify the region. And it will put more pressure on Hezbollah.”
One of the hospitals receiving patients, American University of Beirut Medical Center, was forced to fend off a baseless conspiracy theory that circulated after the attack suggesting that its leaders were somehow privy to the attack — claims the university said it “categorically denies.” It noted that it has received over 160 seriously wounded people after the attack.
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