The militant group Hezbollah said on Tuesday that pagers owned by its members exploded across Lebanon, killing at least eight people and wounding more than 2,700, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry.
Iran-backed Hezbollah blamed Israel for what appeared to be widespread and coordinated explosions but did not provide evidence for its claims. Israel did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the accusations and the pager explosions.
Health Minister Firas Abyad told reporters that more than 200 people were in critical condition after the blast. Authorities updated the death toll after Abyad’s press conference, according to the Associated Press and Al Jazeera.
As the state of emergency continues, Lebanese authorities have ordered citizens to avoid using mobile communication devices.
One of the injured was Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon, Mojtaba Amani, according to the Iranian embassy, which described his injuries as “minor” in a post on X, adding that he was in good condition.
Hezbollah said in a statement that the blast killed “a girl and her two brothers.”
It added that the explosion came from a pager belonging to “officials of various Hezbollah units and agencies.”
One of those killed was Mohammed Mahdi, the son of Hezbollah MP Ali Ammar, according to the state news agency.
Hezbollah says it has provided its members with pagers, many of whom have stopped using mobile phones out of fear that Israel could use the devices to track and monitor them.
“We call on all citizens who own wireless communication devices not to use them until the truth about what is happening is clear,” the health ministry said, according to NNA.
It is unclear whether the explosion was part of a coordinated attack, but it would represent a major security breach for Hezbollah.
State Department spokesman Matt Miller told a news conference that the US was not aware of the “incident” in advance and was “gathering information” about the explosion.
The Lebanese Red Cross said it had dispatched 130 ambulances to treat those injured in the blast, with another 170 on standby. The country’s civil emergency authority called on people to donate blood at hospitals “as soon as possible,” state news reported.
Reuters reported that dozens of Hezbollah members were seriously injured in southern Lebanon and the southern outskirts of the capital, Beirut.
A Reuters journalist said he saw 10 Hezbollah members bleeding from wounds in the Beirut suburb of Dahiyeh, but an unknown number of civilians were killed.
As of late Tuesday afternoon local time, no one had claimed responsibility for the explosion, parts of which appeared to have been captured on security camera footage and shared on social media.
Hezbollah said in a second statement that after reviewing “all the facts” and intelligence, it blamed Israel for the explosion. The blast came a day after Israel announced new war aims, stoking fears of a new military attack on Lebanon.
The Lebanese Foreign Ministry condemned what it called an “Israeli cyber attack”, adding that it would lodge a complaint about the blast with the UN Security Council.
“This dangerous and deliberate Israeli escalation is accompanied by Israeli threats to massively escalate the scope of the war against Lebanon and its intransigent stance calling for further bloodshed, destruction and devastation,” the statement said.
Former CIA Director John Brennan told NBC News that the scale and synchronicity of the attacks led him to believe the pager hardware contained some kind of explosive, and he speculated that the pagers may have been intercepted at some point and replaced “with ones that Hezbollah thought were harmless.”
“All suspicions point to Israel being responsible,” Brennan said.
He added that he believed Israel’s intention was to send a message to Hezbollah that it has the ability to go after militias inside Lebanon.
Israel has warned its closest ally, the United States, that “military action” is likely the only way to deal with growing hostility with Hezbollah.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said late on Monday that the security cabinet had updated its list of war objectives to include the safe return of residents displaced by months of fighting with Hezbollah near the northern border.
“Israel will continue to work towards the realization of this objective,” the prime minister’s office said.
Thousands of people have been displaced on both sides of the Israeli-Lebanese border in the months since Israel launched attacks on Gaza in response to an Oct. 7 Hamas-led terror attack. Hezbollah has vowed to continue its attacks until the Israeli offensive against Gaza ends.
Tensions between Israel and Hezbollah, a powerful militia and political party that was formed in 1986 and rose to power after Israel invaded southern Lebanon pursuing Palestine Liberation Organization fighters, rose during the Gaza war.
Israel attacked Lebanon last month in what it called a pre-emptive strike to thwart Hezbollah plans to launch widespread attacks across the border between the two countries.
The attack came just weeks after Israel assassinated top Hezbollah commander Fouad Shukr, who retaliated by launching a drone attack on the Israeli Grillot base near Tel Aviv.
International diplomats, particularly those from the United States and France, have been working for months to de-escalate the conflict between Hezbollah and Israel in order to contain the war in Gaza.
