Israel bombs Hizbollah strongholds in Lebanon after wave of deadly blasts

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Israel bombed Hizbollah strongholds in southern Lebanon on Thursday, piling pressure on the militant group after two waves of explosions targeted its communications systems, killing 37 people.

Israel has not com-mented on the attacks in which Hizbollah operatives' pagers and walkie-talkies exploded in supermarkets, on streets and at funerals.

The device explosions, involving pagers and walkie-talkies, killed 37 people across two days, including two children, and wounded more than 2,900 others, according to Lebanon's health minister.

Israel's defence min-ister, Yoav Gallant, said on Wednesday, in ref-erence to his country's border with Lebanon: "The centre of gravity is moving northward."

"We are at the start of a new phase in the war," he warned.

Hizbollah is an ally of Palestinian fighter group Hamas, which has been fighting a war in Gaza since its October 7 surprise attack on Israel.

For nearly a year, the focus of Israel's firepower has been on Gaza, which is ruled by Hamas.

But its troops have also been engaged in near-daily clashes with Hizbollah fighters along its northern bor-der, killing hundreds in Lebanon, most of them fighters and dozens in Israel.

The exchanges of fire have forced tens of thousands of people on both sides of the border to flee their homes.

On Thursday, the Is-raeli military said it struck six Hizbollah "infrastructure sites" and a weapons storage facility overnight in southern Lebanon, a stronghold of the fighter group.

Lebanon's National News Agency also re-ported Israeli strikes and shelling on several towns in the south.

Rattled by the attacks that targeted its communication sys-tem, Hizbollah said Is-rael was "fully respon-sible for this criminal aggression" and vowed revenge.

On Thursday it said 25 of its members had been killed in the explosions, with a source close to the group saying at least 20 had died when their walkie-talkies detonated.

'Wider war' 

Lebanon's Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib said the "blatant assault on Lebanon's sovereignty and security" was a danger-ous development that could "signal a wider war".

Its prime minister, Najib Mikati, urged the United Nations to oppose Israel's "technological war" on the country, ahead of a UN Security Council meet-ing on the exploding devices attack.

Iran’s envoy to the UN said his country “reserves the right to take retaliatory measures” after its ambas-sador in Beirut was wounded in the blasts.

The White House, which is pressing to salvage efforts for an elusive ceasefire deal to end the Gaza war, warned all sides against “an escalation of any kind”.

“We don’t believe that the way to solve where we’re at in this crisis is by additional military operations at all,” said US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby.

In Gaza on Wednes-day, the civil defence agency said an Israeli strike on a school-turned-shelter killed five people. The Israeli military said it target-ed Hamas militants.

In Lebanon, the in-flux of so many casu-alties following the blasts overwhelmed medics.

At a Beirut hospital, doctor Joelle Khadra said “the injuries were mainly to the eyes and hands, with finger am-putations, shrapnel in the eyes — some people lost their sight.”

A doctor at another hospital in the Lebanese capital said he had worked through the night and that the injuries were “out of this world — never seen anything like it”.

‘Sabotaged at source’ 

Analysts said opera-tives had likely planted explosives on the pagers before they were de-livered to Hizbollah.

The preliminary find-ings of a Lebanese in-vestigation found the pagers had been booby-trapped, a security offi-cial said.

“Data indicates the devices were pre-pro-grammed to detonate and contained explosive materials planted next to the battery,” the official said, requesting anonymity to dis-cuss sensitive matters.

A source close to Hiz-bollah, asking not to be identified, said the pagers were recently imported and appeared to have been “sabo-taged at source”.

After The New York Times reported that the pagers that ex-ploded on Wednesday had been ordered from Taiwanese manufacturer Gold Apollo, the company said they had been produced by its Hungarian partner BAC Consulting KFT.

A government spokesman in Budapest said the company was “a trading intermediary, with no manufacturing or operational site in Hungary”.

Japanese firm Icom said it had stopped producing the model of radios reportedly used in Wednesday’s blasts in Lebanon around 10 years ago.

In another sign of Israel and Iran’s rivalry, Israeli police and the Shin Bet security service said they had ar-rested an Israeli citizen accused of plotting to assassinate top offi-cials including Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.