According to the latest reports, pager blasts in Lebanon have seen 11 killed, including two children, and over 4,000 injured.
The Iranian Ambassador to Lebanon, Mojtaba Amani, has also been injured in the eyes due to the pager blasts.
According to the latest details, the victims include eight men, one woman and two children.
Fatima Abdullah (10) was the first civilian victim of the pager blasts in Lebanon. She was killed in her parents’ house in Sar’een.
The second child is Bilal Kanj from Ghobeiry in Beirut.
The woman victim, identified as Ataa Mubarak al-Dirani, was from the town of Qasr Naba in the Beqaa region.
The victims were linked with or were family members of Hezbollah personnel.
It has been alleged that the pagers were detonated using remote triggers and the needle of suspicion has been pointed towards Israel.
Though the Israeli military officials have not acknowledged their role in the mass pager blasts in Lebanon, the Zionist state is accused of it as the victims are mostly Hezbollah fighters and officials.
The pager blasts in Lebanon started at 3.30pm Beirut time (12.30pm GMT/6pm IST) on Tuesday, September 17th. The blasts lasted for an hour, as Lebanese media reported.
The blasts mostly took place in the south, the southern suburbs of Beirut known as Dahiyeh and the eastern Bekaa valley—all known as strongholds of Hezbollah.
Hezbollah has been using low-tech pagers for communication to avoid Israel’s surveillance.
It’s alleged that either Israelis hacked the pagers en masse and managed to overheat their batteries, making the low-tech devices explode, or they managed to pack explosives in the compartments of the new consignment of pagers that arrived from Taiwan.
Much of these assessments by Lebanese and Iranian experts are assumptions at present.
According to Lebanese sources, the pagers sold by Taiwan-based Gold Apollo company, which has manufacturing rights for the breakaway Motorola pagers, are manufactured by a Budapest-based company named BAC Consulting KFT.
The Hungarian company has the licence to manufacture the products on behalf of Apollo Gold.
This has highlighted the possible security risks of the devices used by the resistance organisation for communication.
Although the Israeli social media handles have claimed that Hezbollah officials ordered their members to not use pagers, Lebanese sources couldn’t confirm it.
An audio recording of what appears to be a radio message broadcast by Hezbollah was used as evidence by a Zionist social media account called ‘Mossad Commentary’ (not officially linked with the secret service agency).
The male voice in the audio clip was calling on fighters to throw away their pagers.
In the meantime, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah will address the public at 5pm on Thursday to discuss the possible steps of the resistance organisation in defending Lebanon from Israel.
However, it appears that like Iran’s supreme leader, Mr Nasrallah will limit himself to rhetoric-mongering.
Questions have been making rounds in the resistance circle over Hezbollah’s reliance on US-controlled Taiwan for its communication requirements.
Moreover, there are questions over the failure of Hezbollah in deterring the Israeli air strikes and also in protecting its own lot.
Lebanon has been suffering from incessant Israeli strikes deep inside its territory since the beginning of the latter’s attacks on Gaza in October 2023.
Due to a lack of air defence systems and a strong air force, Lebanon appears hapless before these attacks.
Just before the pager blasts in Lebanon, Israel conducted airstrikes in the country’s Majdal Selem that killed three civilians.
The Israelis also hit Odaiseh, Sheheen, Markaba and Maroun al-Raa.
Hezbollah, backed by Iran, couldn’t match the precision of Israel and its rockets—the only weapon it uses against the Zionist forces—often fall in vacant plots or playgrounds in the Israel-occupied territories rather than hitting any military targets.
The pager blasts in Lebanon further revealed the weak spots of the organisation, which has, like Iran, only resorted to rhetoric-mongering rather than taking any decisive actions against Israel.
If the current situation prevails, it appears that in the coming days, Israel will be able to hit Hezbollah and other allies of Iran with ease as they wander disarrayed.
