At least 25 dead as walkie-talkies explode in Lebanon as Israel declares ‘new phase of war’ against Hezbollah

Handheld radios used by Hezbollah exploded across Lebanon on Wednesday in a second wave of deadly blasts as Israel’s defence minister declared his country was entering a “new phase of war” on its northern border.

By Thursday afternoon, the death toll had risen to at least 25 people, with more than 600 injured, Lebanon’s health ministry said.

The blasts came 24 hours after thousands of exploding pagers killed 12 and injured almost 3,000 others in an unprecedented attack that Hezbollah has blamed on Israel.

While Israel has not commented, the finger has been pointed at its Mossad spy agency. A senior Lebanese security source and a second source told reporters that Mossad – which has a long history of complex attacks on foreign soil – planted explosives inside the pagers. The claim was mirrored by American officials cited in US media.

Wednesday’s attacks on walkie-talkies bore similar hallmarks. The devices detonated across the country’s south and in the southern suburbs of the capital Beirut; many of the victims’ wounds were to their stomachs and hands.

At least one of the blasts took place near to a funeral organised by Iran-backed Hezbollah for those killed during the pager explosions.

The handheld radios were purchased by Hezbollah five months ago, around the same time that the pagers were bought, a security source told reporters.

“The prime minister of Lebanon was just here in the situation room at the Ministry of Health,” Lebanon’s health minister, Firass Abiad, told The Independent. “We feel that this is an indiscriminate act of aggression, and that it is another breach of international humanitarian law. I was doing tours today, meeting a lot of the patients and their families. The main feeling I got was one of indignation, not a feeling of hopelessness and desperation – it was a sense of indignation, and a feeling that this is really an escalation.”

Israel and Hezbollah have been trading near-daily cross-border rocket fire since Hamas – which, like Hezbollah, is backed by Iran – launched its bloody act of terror inside Israel on 7 October. That attack killed around 1,200 people and saw another 250 taken hostage into Gaza. Israel’s aerial and ground assault launched in response has killed more than 41,000 Palestinians according to health officials in the territory, and forced a huge proportion of Gaza’s 2.3 million population from their homes.

The rhetoric around the strikes on the Israeli-Lebanon border has been growing in recent weeks, and Israel’s defence minister said on Wednesday that the military is turning its attention towards that front. Yoav Gallant made no mention of the explosions, but praised the work of Israel’s army and security agencies, saying “the results are very impressive”.

After months of war against Hamas militants in Gaza, “the centre of gravity is shifting to the north by diverting resources and forces”, he said. “We are at the start of a new phase in the war – it requires courage, determination and perseverance.”

Israel’s army chief, Herzi Halevi, added that his country has “many capabilities” that have not yet been “activated”.

Jordan’s foreign minister Ayman Safadi accused Israel of pushing the Middle East to the brink of a regional war by orchestrating a dangerous escalation.

Officials told Axios the walkie-talkies were booby-trapped in advance, and that they were being delivered to Hezbollah for use in the event of a full war with Israel; as a result, many were stored in warehouses.

The sources told Axios that the second attack was probably driven by the risk that Hezbollah’s investigations following the first attack would discover the security breach in the walkie-talkies.

Senior Hamas official Izzat al-Rasheq said Israel was responsible for the repercussions of “this continuous attack on Lebanon”. Iran also condemned the attacks, which government spokesperson Fatemeh Mohajerani said had “resulted in the death and injury of hundreds of Lebanese civilians”.

Images of the exploded devices showed an inside panel labelled “ICOM” and the label “Made in Japan”. According to its website, ICOM is a Japan-based radio communications and telephone company.

It has said that production of several models of its handheld radio have been discontinued, including the IC-V82, which appeared to closely match those in images from Lebanon on Wednesday. The model was phased out in 2014.

The death toll from Tuesday’s pager explosions rose to 12 on Wednesday, including two children, Mr Abiad said. Almost 3,000 were wounded, including Iran’s envoy to Beirut.

A Taiwanese pager maker – Gold Apollo – denied it had produced the affected devices. It said they were made under licence by a company called BAC Consulting, based in Budapest. Zoltan Kovacs, a spokesperson for Hungary’s prime minister Viktor Orban, said that the firm is “an intermediary company which has no manufacturing or other site of operation in Hungary” and that the devices “have never been in Hungary”.

Cristiana Barsony-Arcidiacono, chief executive of BAC Consulting, confirmed to NBC News that her company works with Gold Apollo, but added: “I don’t make the pagers. I am just the intermediate. I think you got it wrong.”

BAC Consulting’s website, which was live early on Wednesday but later became unavailable, was vague about the firm’s activities. “With over a decade of consulting experience, we are on an exciting and rewarding journey with our network of passionate experts with a hunger for innovation and discovery for the environment, innovation and development and international affairs,” it said on its LinkedIn page.

Ms Barsony-Arcidiacono’s LinkedIn profile says she has worked as an adviser for organisations including Unesco.

Focus has settled on when and where pagers were compromised; a senior Lebanese source said the devices had been tampered with by Israel’s spy service at the production level.

“Mossad injected a board inside of the device that has explosive material that receives a code. It’s very hard to detect it through any means,” the source said.

Another security source said that up to 3g of explosives were hidden in the pagers and that it had gone “undetected” by Hezbollah for months. Other officials suggested that the explosive was placed next to the battery, alongside a switch that could then be triggered remotely.

UN secretary general Antonio Guterres said he was “deeply alarmed” and urged all sides “to exercise maximum restraint to avert any further escalation”. The UN Security Council will meet on Friday to discuss the blasts.