News Mania Desk/ Piyal Chatterjee / 19th September 2024
In the deadliest day in Lebanon since cross-border violence broke out between the militants and Israel almost a year ago, Hezbollah’s hand-held radios exploded across the country’s south on Wednesday. This heightened tensions following similar explosions of the group’s pagers the day before.
The Bekaa Valley and the suburbs of Beirut saw 20 fatalities and over 450 injuries on Wednesday, according to the health ministry of Lebanon. The number of individuals killed from Tuesday’s blasts increased to 12, including two children, and the number of injured to nearly 3,000.
Security sources said that Israel’s intelligence agency Mossad was behind the explosions, while Israeli officials have not responded to the reports. According to a Hezbollah official, the incident was the largest security breech in the organization’s history.
The operations, which seemed to destabilize Hezbollah, coincided with Israel’s 11-month-long conflict in Gaza and increased concerns about tensions escalating along its border with Lebanon and the possibility of a regional conflict.Israel has been charged by Jordan’s Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi of engineering a dangerous escalation on several fronts that has brought the Middle East to the verge of a regional war.
The United States claimed it was engaging in vigorous diplomacy to prevent the dispute from getting worse while denying any role in the explosions. Speaking under anonymity, a U.S. official claimed that Israel informed Washington on Tuesday that it would take action in Lebanon. However, the individual stated that Washington was taken by surprise by the operation and that Israel had not given any details.
The Red Cross of Lebanon stated on X that it dispatched thirty ambulance teams in response to many explosions that occurred in various parts of the country, such as the Bekaa Valley and the south.
Pictures of the detonated walkie-talkies revealed labels that looked similar to the company’s model IC-V82 gadget and bore the name of the Japanese radio communications and telephone corporation ICOM (6208.T), opens new tab.
Listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange ICOM declared on Thursday that it was looking into press reports that two-way radio devices with its logo burst in Lebanon and that it would update its website as soon as fresh information became available.
The manufacturer, claiming to produce all of its radios in Japan, was unable to verify if the gadget had been dispatched, partly due to the model’s 10-year discontinuation.
The business has already issued a warning on fake models of its products, particularly discontinued ones, that are making their way around the market.
According to a security source, Hezbollah bought the handheld radios and pagers about the same time five months ago.
According to sources, Israeli agents hid explosives in a Hezbollah order of 5,000 pagers, which they remotely detonated before entering the country, which is why there were explosions on Tuesday.On request from Arab governments, the UN Security Council will convene on Friday to discuss the pager blasts.
According to a report by Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency on Tuesday, Tehran’s ambassador to Lebanon sustained minor injuries in Tuesday’s explosions. However, according to the New York Times on Wednesday, which quoted two members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, he lost one eye and seriously wounded the other when a pager he was carrying exploded. Iran “reserves its rights under international law to take required measures deemed necessary to respond” to the attack, the country’s envoy to the United Nations stated in a letter on Wednesday.
Hezbollah, which has promised to avenge Israel, announced on Wednesday that it launched missile attacks on Israeli artillery sites, marking the group’s first action against its bitter enemy since the explosions. According to the Israeli military, there have been no reports of deaths or damage.
Since the Gaza War broke out on October 7, 2023, the two sides have been fighting across the Lebanese border, which has heightened worries of a wider Middle East war that may involve Iran and the United States. According to official figures, the previous highest daily death toll among Lebanese citizens was 11, which occurred during Israeli shelling last month.
