All-out war imminent? After pagers, second wave of explosions hit walkie-talkies in Lebanon killing 20, wounding more than 450
A second wave of device explosions killed 20 people and wounded more than 450 others yesterday in Hezbollah strongholds in Lebanon, officials said, stoking fears of an all-out war with Israel.
(MMO) – A source close to Hezbollah said walkie-talkies used by its members blew up in its Beirut stronghold, with state media reporting similar blasts in south and east Lebanon.
AFPTV footage showed people running for cover when an explosion went off during a funeral for Hezbollah militants in south Beirut in the afternoon.
“The wave of enemy explosions that targeted walkie talkies… killed 20 people and wounded more than 450,” Lebanon’s health ministry said in a statement.
They came a day after the simultaneous explosion of hundreds of paging devices used by Hezbollah killed 12 people, including two children, and wounded up to 2,800 others across Lebanon, in an unprecedented attack blamed on Israel.
There was no comment from Israel, which only hours before Tuesday’s attacks had announced it was broadening the aims of its war with Hamas in Gaza to include its fight against the Palestinian group’s ally Hezbollah.
“The centre of gravity is moving northward,” Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said during a visit to an air base yesterday. “We are at the start of a new phase in the war.”
Israeli officials have remained tight-lipped about the explosions that led the television news bulletins and dominated newspaper headlines.
Amos Harel of the left-leaning Haaretz newspaper said the pager and walkie-talkie blasts had put “Israel and Hezbollah on the brink of all-out war”.
