At least nine persons, including an 8-year-old girl, were killed and 2,750 injured on Tuesday after pagers used by members of the militant group Hezbollah exploded across Lebanon, the country’s health minister Firass Abiad said, according to Al Jazeera.
In a statement after the blasts, Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran, blamed Israel for the “criminal aggression” and said that the messaging devices belonged to employees of its various units and institutions, BBC reported. The group vowed that it would get “just retribution”.
There was no comment on the blasts from Israel at the time.
Among those injured in the blasts was Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon, Mojtaba Amani, Iran’s Mehr news agency reported, according to Al Jazeera.
Hezbollah and Israel have exchanged near-daily strikes for the past 10 months amid Tel Aviv’s war on the besieged Palestinian enclave of Gaza. Hezbollah is an ally of the Palestinian militant group Hamas.
On Tuesday, the pagers received a message at 3.30 pm that appeared to be sent from Hezbollah’s leadership, The New York Times reported, quoting several unidentified officials. The pagers exploded after beeping for several seconds.
Israel reportedly hid explosive material into the batteries of a shipment of pagers made in Taiwan and imported into Lebanon, other unidentified officials added, according to The New York Times.
Hezbollah members had been using pagers as a way to communicate in order to evade Israeli location-tracking, Reuters reported, quoting unidentified sources.
After the blasts, US State Department Spokesperson Matthew Miller said that the United States was was not involved in the explosions and did not know who was responsible.
“We are gathering information on this incident,” Miller said. “I can tell you that the US was not involved in it. The US was not aware of this incident in advance.”
Israel’s military offensive against Gaza began on October 7 after Hamas launched an incursion into southern Israel, killing 1,200 persons and taking over 200 hostages. Israel has been carrying out unprecedented air and ground strikes on Gaza since then. The attacks have killed more than 40 thousand persons, including 16,500 children.
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