In a speech broadcast live, the head of Lebanon’s Hezbollah said that “the enemy wanted to kill no less than 5,000 people” by blowing up, two days in a row, the pagers and walkie-talkies in the hands of members of the powerful pro-Iranian movement.
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah acknowledged on Thursday, September 19, that his group had received “a severe and unprecedented blow in the history of Lebanon” with the deadly explosions of the group’s transmission devices, warning Israel that its response would be “terrible.”
As he delivered his speech, which was broadcast live, Israeli aircraft flew low over Beirut, breaking the sound barrier, according to AFP correspondents and the official Lebanese news agency Ani.
“The enemy wanted to kill no less than 5,000 people” by blowing up the pagers and walkie-talkies in the hands of members of his group on Tuesday and Wednesday, he said. Hassan Nasrallah accused Israel of having “crossed all the red lines.”
He warned that Israel would receive “a terrible punishment and a just retribution, where it expects it and where it does not expect it.” But the Hezbollah leader assured that he would not give any details on “the timing, the place or the nature” of the response that his group is preparing.
“Until the end of the aggression in Gaza”
Hundreds of beepers and walkie-talkies used by Iran-backed Hezbollah, an ally of Palestinian Hamas, exploded across Lebanon on Tuesday and Wednesday in an unprecedented attack that killed 37 people and wounded nearly 3,000. Hassan Nasrallah said Hezbollah had opened an internal investigation into the blasts, which Israel has not claimed responsibility for.
He also assured that his movement would continue to attack Israel from Lebanon in support of the Palestinian Hamas, “until the end of the aggression in Gaza.”
Addressing Israeli leaders, he said they would “not be able to bring home” residents of northern Israel displaced by cross-border clashes: “the only way (to do that) is to stop the war in Gaza.”
