Several explosions of beepers used by Hezbollah members took place in Lebanon and Syria on Tuesday, September 17. At least nine people died.
Nine people were killed in Lebanon after a series of explosions involving pagers, a radio paging system, on Tuesday, September 17. The first explosions rang out in the afternoon, before continuing in several regions of Lebanon and Syria, saturating various hospitals.
While the circumstances of the blasts are still unclear, the Lebanese Islamist movement has said that Israel is “entirely responsible.” Hezbollah has promised that the Hebrew state will receive “its just punishment” following “this criminal aggression.”
250 people in critical condition
Nine people have been killed in Lebanon and nearly 2,750 have been injured: 250 people are in critical condition, according to a provisional report from Lebanon’s Health Minister, Firass Abiad. At a press conference, he said the victims were injured “in the face, hand, stomach and even eyes.”
Many hospitals in the country are overwhelmed by the influx of hundreds of wounded, who are civilians but also hundreds of Hezbollah members. A ten-year-old girl is among the victims, as well as the sons of two Hezbollah deputies, according to a Source close to Hezbollah to AFP.
Iraq announces sending medical teams and emergency workers to help Lebanon. Baghdad also says it fears a regional “expansion of the war”.
In Syria, fourteen members of the pro-Iranian Hezbollah were also injured by the explosion of their pagers, at a time when hundreds of other such paging devices exploded in Lebanon, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said.
Hamas “strongly condemns Zionist terrorist aggression”
The United States has said it was “not involved” in the explosions in Lebanon and that it “did not know about this incident in advance,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters. Washington also urged “Iran not to use any event to try to fuel instability and further escalate tensions in the region.”
For its part, Hamas “strongly condemned the Zionist terrorist aggression that targeted Lebanese citizens by blowing up communication devices in different regions of Lebanese territory.” It added that the attack made no distinction “between resistance fighters and civilians.”
As for air links, Air France has notably suspended flights between Paris and Beirut and between Paris and Tel Aviv, until September 19 inclusive.
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With AFP
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