Update: 9 killed, 300 injured in Lebanon in 2nd day of sabotaged wireless device explosions

For the second day in a row, handheld communications devices exploded on Wednesday afternoon across Nabatieh, Sour, the Beqaa governorate and the southern suburbs of Beirut.

Nine people were killed and at least 300 more injured, the Lebanese Health Ministry said on Wednesday evening, in the blasts that occurred at funeral processions, in cars and apartments and in public areas across the country.

Three people were confirmed killed in Beqaa and others were transferred to hospitals in Beirut, the Lebanese national news agency reported.

The explosions came a day after thousands of pagers carried by Hezbollah members simultaneously exploded.

Lebanese Health Minister Firas Abyad said during a press conference earlier on Wednesday afternoon that the death toll from Tuesday’s attack, which the government and Hezbollah attributed to Israel, had risen to 12 people, including two children. The two children were aged 8 and 11. Around 2,800 were wounded, including 300 people in critical condition, according to the minister.

The explosions that rocked the country on Wednesday hit the funerals of some of those killed on Tuesday.

At a funeral in the Ghobeiry district of Beirut, one person was killed and around 100 injured, according to a Lebanese security source who spoke to Mada Masr.

In a funeral in the southern governorate of Nabatieh, an eyewitness told Mada Masr that there was a “sudden explosion” in the crowd of people, which threw a man to the ground and sent attendees fleeing. Ambulances arrived at the scene to transport the wounded to health facilities and the funeral resumed, she added.

Multiple eyewitnesses told Mada Masr that the military conducted a controlled explosion in Beirut of a wireless device expected to have been rigged with explosives.

Reports in the aftermath of Tuesday’s blasts noted that explosive material had been placed in the pagers before they were delivered to Lebanon.

A second Lebanese security source close to Hezbollah who spoke to Mada Masr said that the devices that exploded on Wednesday were similarly tampered with by Israel before delivery. 

According to the source, the pagers and wireless devices were part of an emergency communications system that Hezbollah planned to use in the event of full scale war with Israel. The attack further damaged Hezbollah's military command and control system, the source added.

When Wednesday’s blasts hit, the details of the effects of the attack from the day prior were still coming into focus.

Workers in Lebanon’s healthcare sector were among those killed on Tuesday, the health minister said in his press conference earlier on Wednesday.

A medical source at Beirut’s Rassoul al-Aazam Hospital, speaking to Mada Masr on condition of anonymity, confirmed that some of the portable devices had exploded inside the hospital.

Around 1,850 people were injured in the southern suburbs of Beirut on Tuesday, as well as around 750 in the south and 150 in the Bekaa. Those wounded in the south were transported to hospitals across Sidon, Nabatieh, and Sour, while ambulance services worked to transport cases in the south to hospitals in Beirut and the north.

Doctor Moanas Kalkash, the director of Marj Ayoun Government Hospital, told Mada Masr that four patients came to the hospital he manages in the south after Tuesday afternoon’s explosions. Those injured suffered wounds to the face, stomach and hands, he said, noting that two of the patients were still at the hospital receiving treatment. The source at Rassoul al-Aazam Hospital and two other medical sources from hospitals in the south said that they treated dozens of similar injuries each.

MP Elias Jradi, an ophthalmologist, told Mada Masr that he headed to the hospitals in Nabatieh and spent several hours treating eye injuries there.

Iranian Ambassador to Lebanon Mojtaba Amini, who was among those injured in the attack, also suffered eye injuries.

Until now, Israel has not officially claimed responsibility for the operation. An informed source speaking anonymously to Axios, however, said that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, senior members of his Cabinet and security sources had given prior approval.

US State Secretary Antony Blinken, in Cairo on Wednesday for another round of Gaza ceasefire talks, said that the United States was still gathering facts and insisted that the US did not know about and was not involved in the explosions while warning “all parties” against the escalation of the conflict in the region.

Multiple scenarios were presented in the media to explain what caused the pagers to explode on Tuesday. The devices were described as rigged with explosives by Israel ahead of their delivery to Hezbollah by US officials who spoke anonymously to the New York Times. A small amount of explosive material was implanted next to the battery in each pager, along with a switch that could be triggered remotely to detonate the explosives, the NYT reported.

Axios presented a scenario for the rationale behind Tuesday’s attack, citing two US official sources who said that Israel intended Tuesday’s attack to undermine Hezbollah’s confidence and create the feeling of a security breach without escalating to an all-out war.

According to the sources quoted in Axios, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant informed his US counterpart of an Israeli operation in Lebanon without sharing any specific details, just minutes before the explosions started.

Gold Apollo, the Taiwanese company that produced the pagers, distanced itself from the operation, saying that the shipment of pagers affected on Tuesday did not come directly from the Taiwanese company, but were manufactured and sold by its Budapest-based partner BAC Consulting KFT.

Hezbollah has vowed retribution for the attacks.

This text was edited after publication to reflect updated information.