A second wave of exploding electronic devices across Lebanon killed at least 20 people and wounded over 450 others, the country’s health ministry said Wednesday, a day after thousands of pagers used by Hezbollah exploded in what appeared to be a deadly remote attack.
Among the scenes of Wednesday’s explosions was near the funeral for three Hezbollah members and a child killed by pagers the day before, according to Associated Press journalists at the scene.
A Hezbollah official told The Associated Press that walkie-talkies used by the group exploded Wednesday as a part of blasts heard in the capital Beirut. Reuters also reported the explosions came from Hezbollah hand-held radios, citing a security source and a witness in Lebanon.
An AP photographer in the southern coastal city of Sidon saw a car and a mobile phone shop damaged after devices exploded inside of them. A girl was hurt in the south when a solar energy system blew up, the state news agency reported.
Tuesday’s exploding pager attack across Lebanon and parts of Syria killed at least 12 people and wounded roughly 2,800 people, according to Lebanese officials — including 300 in critical condition.
The Lebanese government and Hezbollah have blamed Tuesday’s attack on Israel, and Wednesday’s explosions threatened to further raise tensions in the region and even all-out war between Israel and Hezbollah. Israel has not confirmed its involvement in either incident.
Speaking to Israeli troops on Wednesday, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said, “We are at the start of a new phase in the war — it requires courage, determination and perseverance.”
He made no mention of the explosions of electronic devices but praised the work of Israel’s army and security agencies, saying “the results are very impressive.”
An American official told the AP Israel briefed the United States on Tuesday after the attack, in which small amounts of explosive hidden in the pagers were detonated. A senior Lebanese security source and another source described the same details to Reuters, and that Israel’s Mossad spy agency was responsible.
It was not yet clear what caused Wednesday’s explosions.
A Reuters reporter in the southern suburbs of Beirut said he saw Hezbollah members frantically taking out the batteries of any walkie-talkies on them that had not exploded, tossing the parts in metal barrels around them.
Lebanon’s Red Cross said it was responding with 30 ambulance teams to multiple explosions in different areas.
Pagers linked to Hungarian company
A company based in Hungary was responsible for manufacturing the pagers that exploded in Lebanon and Syria in an apparent Israeli operation targeting Hezbollah’s communications network, another firm whose brand was used on the devices said Wednesday.
The AR-924 pagers used the attack were manufactured by BAC Consulting KFT, based in the Hungarian capital of Budapest, according to a statement released by Gold Apollo, a Taiwanese firm that authorized the use of its brand on the pagers.
BAC appeared to be a shell company.
“According to the cooperation agreement, we authorize BAC to use our brand trademark for product sales in designated regions, but the design and manufacturing of the products are solely the responsibility of BAC,” Gold Apollo said in a statement.
The company’s chair, Hsu Ching-kuang, told journalists Wednesday that the firm has had a licensing agreement with BAC for the past three years.
BAC Consulting Kft., a limited liability company, was registered in May 2022, according to company records. It has 7,840 euros in standing capital, the records showed, and had revenue of $725,768 in 2022 and $593,972 in 2023.
At the headquarters in a building in a residential neighborhood of Budapest, Associated Press journalists saw the names of multiple companies, including BAC Consulting, posted on pieces of paper on a window.
A woman who emerged from the building and declined to give her name, said the site provides headquarter addresses to various companies.
BAC is registered to Cristiana Rosaria Bársony-Arcidiacono, who on her LinkedIn page describes herself as a strategic advisor and business developer. Among other positions, Bársony-Arcidiacono says on the page that she has served on the board of directors of the Earth Child Institute, a sustainability group. The group does not list Bársony-Arcidiacono as among its board members on its website.
The AP has attempted to reach Bársony-Arcidiacono via her LinkedIn page and has been unable to establish a connection between her or BAC and the exploding pagers.
Taiwan’s Ministry of Economic Affairs said from the beginning of 2022 until August 2024, Gold Apollo has exported 260,000 sets of pagers, including more than 40,000 sets between January and August of this year. The ministry said that it had no records of direct exports of Gold Apollo pagers to Lebanon.
Images of Wednesday’s exploded walkie-talkies examined by Reuters showed an inside panel labeled “ICOM” and “made in Japan.” According to its website, ICOM is a Japan-based radio communications and telephone company.
The company has said that production of several models of the ICOM hand-held radio have been discontinued, including the IC-V82, which appeared to closely match those in images from Lebanon on Wednesday and which was phased out in 2014.
ICOM did not immediately respond when asked for comment.
Fallout from pagers continues
The attack in Lebanon started Tuesday afternoon, when pagers in their owners’ hands or pockets started heating up and then exploding — leaving blood-splattered scenes and panicking bystanders.
It appeared that most of those hit were members or linked to members of Hezbollah — whether fighters or civilians — but it was not immediately clear if people with no ties to Hezbollah were also hit.
Lebanon’s health ministry said two health care workers and two children were among those killed. Doctors, nurses, paramedics, charity workers, teachers and office administrators work for Hezbollah-linked organizations, and an unknown number had pagers.
In the village of Nadi Sheet in the Bekaa Valley, dozens gathered to mourn the death of one of the children, nine-year-old Fatima Abdullah.
Her mother, wearing black and donning a yellow Hezbollah scarf, wept alongside other women and children as they gathered around the little girl’s coffin before her burial.
Coffins of Hezbollah fighters killed by the pagers were carried through the streets of Beirut through crowds of people Wednesday.
At hospitals in Beirut on Wednesday, the chaos of the night before had largely subsided, but relatives of the wounded continued to wait.
Lebanon Health Minister Firas Abiad told journalists during a tour on hospitals Wednesday morning that many of the wounded had severe injuries to the eyes, and others had limbs amputated. Journalists were not allowed to enter hospital rooms or film patients.
Abiad said that the wounded had been sent to various area hospitals to avoid any single facility being overloaded and added that Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Syria and Egypt offered to help treat the patients.
More than 400 surgeries were carried out on Tuesday, the minister said.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk called for an independent investigation into the events surrounding exploding pagers.
Iran condemned the Tuesday and Wednesday incidents, government spokesperson Fatemeh Mohajerani said in a post on the X social media platform on Wednesday, offering help to the wounded.
Tehran’s ambassador to Lebanon, Mojtaba Amani, was injured in the exploision of his pager on Tuesday, and shared on Wednesday a message of solidarity to Lebanon on his X account.
Will Hezbollah retaliate?
Hezbollah has vowed to retaliate against Israel and announced three strikes on parts of northern Israel Wednesday, at least one of which took place after the latest round of device explosions.
Hezbollah and Israeli forces have exchanged fire nearly daily since Oct. 8, the day after a deadly Hamas-led attack in southern Israel triggered a massive Israeli counteroffensive and the ongoing conflict in Gaza. Since then, hundreds have been killed in the strikes in Lebanon and dozens in Israel, while tens of thousands on each side of the border have been displaced.
Hezbollah has said it would only stop its cross-border attacks once Israel withdraws its forces from Gaza. Hezbollah is aligned with Hamas, which has controlled the Palestinian territory for decades, and both militant groups are backed by Iran.
This week’s attacks — and the fact that Hezbollah blamed Israel — renewed fears of a full-blown war. Israeli leaders have issued a series of warnings in recent weeks that they might escalate operations against Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Israel’s army chief, Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, said Wednesday plans have been drawn up for additional action against Hezbollah. Israeli media reported the government has not yet decided whether to launch a major offensive in Lebanon.
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 on many fronts.
The U.S. has urged all sides in the broader Middle East conflict to reduce tensions and has sought to lead a diplomatic end to the hostilities. Gaza ceasefire talks mediated by the U.S., Egypt and Qatar have stalled, however, and attempts to mediate a truce between Israel and Hezbollah have yet to bear fruit.
The White House would not comment on the latest explosions or speculate on who was responsible. National security spokesperson John Kirby also wouldn’t entertain “hypotheticals” on whether such actions would be considered responsible conduct by a “state actor.”
But U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken appeared to express frustration while appearing alongside his Egyptian counterpart Badr Abdelatty in Cairo on Wednesday.
“It’s imperative that all parties refrain from any actions that could escalate the conflict,” he told reporters.
—With files from the Associated Press and Reuters