The Washington Post
Updated September 18, 2024 at 2:19 p.m. EDT|Published September 18, 2024 at 7:02 a.m. EDT
Lebanon reels as more devices explode, casualties rise
The source of Wednesday’s explosions was not immediately clear, but the blasts came a day after thousands of pagers used by Hezbollah blew up across Lebanon.
Ambulances at the entrance to the American University of Beirut Medical Center on Tuesday, after pagers detonated across Lebanon. (Anwar Amro/AFP/Getty Images)
BEIRUT — New explosions linked to electronic devices killed at least 20 people and injured more than 450 across Lebanon on Wednesday, a day after 12 people were killed and thousands wounded by exploding pagers used by members of the militant group Hezbollah in a suspected Israeli attack.
The source of Wednesday’s explosions was not immediately clear. The state news agency said some of the explosions occurred in a brand of two-way radio. At least one of the explosions occurred at a funeral in Beirut’s southern suburbs, held by Hezbollah for people who were killed in Tuesday’s blasts.
Crowds had begun gathering for the funerals when a blast sent people running.
“Anyone who has a device, take out the battery now!” Hezbollah security members yelled to mourners. “Turn off your phones, switch it to airplane mode,” young men in black T-shirts and khakis shouted.
Bystanders at the funeral said a handheld radio exploded in someone’s hand at the edge of the crowd. Ambulances pushed through streets filled with men and women in black who were waving flags.
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The explosions, on consecutive days and across the country, were the latest cruel trial for Lebanon, reeling from years of economic collapse, political malaise and 11 months of conflict between Hezbollah and Israel. The first wave, on Tuesday, overwhelmed hospitals with a flood of maimed patients, in what was seen as a broad and terrifying assault on the country and not just a narrow attack on Hezbollah’s cadres.
The group, which is also a political party, runs social and charitable institutions, hospitals, museums and construction companies, forming one of Lebanon’s many vast patronage networks. Those carrying the pagers that exploded included fighters but also doctors and other civilian workers, the blasts harming some of the people — such as family members or bystanders in shops — they interacted with.
The shock of Tuesday’s detonations, in the middle of the afternoon, shortly after schools had been let out, recalled for many the aftermath of a deadly port explosion in 2020 that killed more than 200 people and injured thousands.
Rescue workers who toiled all day Tuesday ferrying the injured were forced back to work Wednesday, after the new explosions. “We’re focused on the injured and putting out fires,” Walid Hashhash, a paramedic with Lebanon’s civil defense, said Wednesday evening. He was thrown into service a day earlier when a pager injured someone outside a hospital where he was visiting a colleague.
As they tended to the injured person, “someone on a moped” arrived with another wounded person, “then more people started to show up. We didn’t know what was happening,” he said.
The civil defense released a dizzying tally of incidents it had responded to Wednesday, saying they stemmed from explosions in “wireless devices and fingerprint analysis devices.” Sixty homes and shops were affected in the southern Nabatieh province, and houses, homes, shops and vehicles were damaged or set on fire by explosions in northern Lebanon, the eastern Bekaa province and Beirut’s southern suburbs.
In a statement Wednesday before the second round of explosions, Hezbollah said it would continue its military operations against Israel to “support Gaza.” Hezbollah’s attacks against Israel, which started in October in support of its ally Hamas in Gaza, were “separate from the difficult reckoning that the criminal enemy must await for its massacre on Tuesday,” the statement said.
“This is another reckoning that will come,” it added. The group did not immediately comment on Wednesday’s blasts.
At least 12 people were killed, and as many as 2,800 were injured Tuesday when the pagers simultaneously detonated around 3:30 p.m., Lebanese Health Minister Firas Abiad said in a news conference Wednesday.
Blast at supermarket in Beirut
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Video shows the moment of an explosion in a supermarket in the Lebanese capital of Beirut on Sept. 17. (Video: Reuters)
Israel’s military, which often does not announce its operations abroad, declined to comment on whether it was responsible. Experts said the attack appeared to be a sophisticated and preplanned operation, relying on the placement of explosives in the devices sometime before Hezbollah distributed them.
A Taiwanese pager manufacturer, Gold Apollo, whose logo was seen on some of the destroyed pagers, said it did not make the devices that exploded in Lebanon. The company said Wednesday in a statement that the pagers in question were “entirely handled” by a company called BAC Consulting KFT. The Hungarian company was authorized to use Gold Apollo’s brand trademark in some regions, it said. BAC did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The attack came as Israel signaled increased attention to its border with Lebanon. Officials said this week that military action against Hezbollah was needed to allow thousands of northern residents to return home, in a sign that Israel was shifting its focus from the war against Hamas in Gaza.
The deluge of patients at medical centers after Tuesday’s explosions was a chilling preview of what Lebanon could face during a war. Medical personnel performed 460 surgeries, including on people with injuries to their faces, eyes and fingers, and 300 people remained in critical condition, Abiad said Wednesday. Those killed Tuesday included an 8-year-old girl and an 11-year-old boy. Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon was among those injured, the state-run news agency said.
To help, Iraq’s government sent doctors and other health workers to Lebanon, along with more than 15 tons of supplies and medical aid, Abiad said.
George Nakad, a surgeon at Al Najda Hospital in Nabatieh, in southern Lebanon, said he was on duty till 1 a.m. Wednesday. “They normally don’t bring that many injured to our hospital, not in this war,” he said. Two of the injured people who were brought to the hospital had been blinded, he said.
Salah Zeineddine, chief medical officer at the American University of Beirut Medical Center, said in an interview Wednesday that the hospital was flooded with around 200 patients within a few hours of the initial pager blasts. The medical center’s 12 operating rooms “have been working on a nonstop basis ever since,” he said.
The patients — mostly young or middle-aged men, as well as some women and children — came with “close impact blast injuries,” mostly to the eyes, nose, cheekbones, as well as to the hands and lower abdomen. A system devised this year, in which patients with limited injuries are quickly stabilized and moved out of the emergency room, helped the hospital to cope. So did previous experience with mass casualties after the Beirut port blast, Zeineddine said.
Schools and universities were closed Wednesday as unions called strikes in sympathy with the victims. “We reiterate our calls for the highest levels of national solidarity in these difficult circumstances,” Ibrahim Mneimneh, an independent member of Lebanon’s parliament, wrote on X.
As night fell Wednesday, the Lebanese army detonated wireless devices found near the American University of Beirut Medical Center, the state news agency reported.
A closed gate to a school in the coastal city of Sidon, Lebanon, on Wednesday. (Aziz Taher/Reuters)
Lama Fakih, the Middle East and North Africa director of Human Rights Watch, said in a statement Wednesday that international humanitarian law “prohibits the use of booby traps — objects that civilians are likely to be attracted to or are associated with normal civilian daily use — precisely to avoid putting civilians at grave risk and produce the devastating scenes that continue to unfold across Lebanon today.”
The use of an explosive device “whose exact location could not be reliably known would be unlawfully indiscriminate, using a means of attack that could not be directed at a specific military target and as a result would strike military targets and civilians without distinction,” Fakih said, calling for a “prompt and impartial investigation into the attacks.”
Foreign governments warned that the attack could be a prelude to escalation in Israel’s hair-trigger confrontation with Hezbollah.
The British government’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) said in a statement that the deaths of civilians in the explosions were “deeply distressing” and urged “calm heads and de-escalation.”
The FCDO also updated its travel advisory for Lebanon — it “advises against all travel” there — with a section on the incident. It said hospitals in Lebanon “may be very busy as a result” of the explosions and warned British nationals in the country to “expect an increased presence of Lebanese Armed Forces in affected areas.”
U.S. officials declined Tuesday to publicly offer further information about the explosions.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken, speaking Wednesday at a news conference in Cairo, said “the United States did not know about, nor was it involved in these incidents. We’re still gathering the information and gathering the facts.”
Blinken said it was important for all parties involved to avoid “any steps that could further escalate the conflict that we’re trying to resolve in Gaza, to see it spread to other fronts.”
Fahim reported from Istanbul and Timsit from London. Suzan Haidamous in Beirut, Claire Parker in Cairo and Bryan Pietsch in Washington contributed to this report.
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