A minister from Lebanon announced on Tuesday that an apparent assault on Hezbollah members and fighters resulted in the deaths of eight individuals and left 2,800 others injured. The attack specifically targeted the communication devices utilized by the organization.
The Times of Israel reported:
“Lebanon’s health minister says eight were killed and some 2,800 were wounded, including 200 seriously, in the pager blasts in Lebanon. Hezbollah has said that two members are among the dead. A young girl, the daughter of a Hezbollah member, was also reported killed after a pager exploded in her parents’ home.”
Visuals disseminated on social media depicted individuals suffering from injuries to their abdomens and chests, likely resulting from the detonation of pagers that occurred simultaneously on Tuesday.
Speculation arose regarding Hezbollah’s potential abandonment of their more advanced mobile devices following the assassination of Fuad Shukr, the group’s second-in-command, by Israel in July. The method by which the pagers were compromised remains unclear, and while it has not been definitively established that Israel was responsible for the hacking, there are theories suggesting that malware may have led to the overheating and subsequent explosion of the devices’ lithium batteries.
Additionally, the Iranian ambassador to Lebanon sustained injuries during the incident, and a member of the Lebanese parliament from Hezbollah lost his son. Reports also indicated that similar pager explosions took place in Syria, where Hezbollah and Iran are engaged in military activities.
