2024-09-17 22:10:23
Explosions of personal communication devices in Lebanon kill nine people and injure approximately 2,750 others. About 200 of them are in critical condition. This was reported by the Lebanese Ministry of Health, which previously reported eight dead, writes the AFP agency. The Iranian ambassador in Beirut was also wounded.
Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement confirmed the death of two of its members and a child. According to AFP, she was the daughter of a member of parliament for Hezbollah. Other sources, cited by the AP and Reuters agencies, claim that among the dead is the son of a member of parliament for Hezbollah, and among the wounded are a number of the sons of high-ranking leaders of the movement. According to Iran’s Mehr agency, Iran’s ambassador to Beirut, Mojtaba Amani, was also wounded. Both the Lebanese government and Hezbollah attribute the case to Israel. He did not comment on the matter.
Hezbollah said it was conducting a “security and scientific investigation” into the causes of the pager explosions that injured nearly 3,000 people and killed at least nine people today.
Reuters security sources analyzed footage of the explosions and concluded that in some cases the communication device exploded after it rang and the owner grabbed it. According to the agency, the explosions were apparently of a smaller scale. However, experts speculate about what caused them. One theory is the explosion of the power battery, another is the insertion of an explosive directly into the pager.
Experts interviewed by Reuters were surprised by the explosions. But several of them expressed doubts that only the batteries could have caused the explosions. Paul Christensen, an expert on lithium-ion battery safety at the University of Newcastle, said the scale of damage caused by pager explosions appeared to be different from other cases of battery failure in these devices.
“We’re talking about a relatively small battery that catches fire. It’s not a fatal explosion. I’d need to know more about the energy density of batteries, but my intuition tells me that’s highly unlikely,” he said.
Pagers prevent eavesdropping
According to The New York Times, Hezbollah began using pagers more widely to communicate after the outbreak of war in the Gaza Strip last October in an effort to prevent Israeli wiretapping and tracking of the device’s location.
Lebanese digital rights organization SMEX told Reuters that Israel could have exploited weaknesses in the device and caused it to explode. The pagers could also have been tampered with before they reached Hezbollah, either by electronic modification or by having an explosive device inserted into them, according to the organization.
The Lebanese Ministry of Information announced that the government considers the explosion to be “Israeli aggression”, Reuters wrote. Lebanese diplomacy said it was a “conscious and dangerous escalation of tension by Israel”. He is preparing a complaint addressed to the UN Security Council. Israel has not officially commented on the explosions.
According to the agencies, the explosions began on Tuesday afternoon and lasted a total of one hour. The device began to overheat and then exploded, the AP agency wrote. However, it is not clear what started such unusual behavior of the devices. According to an AFP source, a device recently brought into the country by Hezbollah exploded. The same information was confirmed by sources and the Reuters agency. According to the media, devices belonging to Hezbollah in Syria also exploded.
According to the agencies, due to the high number of wounded, hospitals in Beirut, southern Lebanon and other areas where Hezbollah has a strong presence have called for blood donations. A large number of people waiting for treatment in hospitals, some of whom were in a serious condition, was also confirmed by the associates of the AP agency. The Ministry of Health added that injuries to the abdomen, hands or face are common.
Iranian media reported that Ambassador Amani is under observation in hospital and that his injuries are not serious.
The terrorist movement Hamas, which is an ally of Hezbollah, described the explosions as part of Israeli aggression in the region. Iran, which sponsors Hezbollah, is also talking about an Israeli attack. The US embassy said it did not know who was behind the blasts and was gathering information about it. She called on Iran to refrain from actions that could increase tensions in the region.
Pagers and other similar devices, which have mostly been replaced by mobile phones around the world in recent years, are still used by some institutions and countries due to the supposed greater reliability of the network. Images of the destroyed pagers, according to Reuters, indicate they were made by a Taiwanese company, Gold Apollo. However, it, like Hezbollah, did not respond to Reuters’ request for comment. According to three Reuters security sources, the latest model of the pager, which Hezbollah has acquired in recent months, has exploded.