Middle East braces for Hezbollah response to Lebanon pager, radio attacks

Israeli authorities, who rarely discuss operations in other countries, declined to comment on whether Israel was responsible. But the sophisticated and complex operation bore the hallmarks of Israel’s intelligence agency, Mossad, which has a history of carrying out targeted assassinations abroad. U.S. officials have acknowledged Israel was behind the attack. Two U.S. officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive subject said the Israelis did not inform the United States about the specifics before the attack took place but told Washington afterward through intelligence channels.

With anxiety swirling over whether there will be more attacks involving wireless devices, Beirut’s international airport has banned passengers from carrying pagers and walkie-talkies onto any aircraft, Lebanon’s state news agency reported. The Lebanese army said Thursday that it was still detonating “suspicious” communications devices across the country.

The explosions, which began on Tuesday afternoon when thousands of pagers used by Hezbollah members beeped simultaneously before erupting, sent people streaming into hospitals across Lebanon, many having lost eyes or hands or suffering serious abdominal injuries. Two children were among those killed Tuesday, Lebanese Health Minister Firas Abiad said Wednesday.

Taiwanese pager manufacturer Gold Apollo, whose logo was seen on some of the destroyed pagers, said it did not make the devices that exploded in Lebanon. The company said in a statement Wednesday that the pagers in question were “entirely handled” by a Hungarian company called BAC Consulting KFT. BAC did not respond to requests for comment. Hungarian government spokesman Zoltan Kovacs said “the referenced devices have never been in Hungary.”

On Wednesday afternoon, a new round of detonations — involving two-way radios and “fingerprint analysis devices,” according to Lebanon’s civil defense — killed at least 20 people and damaged or set on fire homes, shops and vehicles in northern Lebanon, the eastern Bekaa province and Beirut’s southern suburbs. At least one of the explosions occurred at a funeral in those suburbs, held by Hezbollah for people who were killed in Tuesday’s blasts.

Images from the scenes of the explosions showed walkie-talkies bearing the name of Icom, a Japanese manufacturer of radio equipment, which said the model in question had been discontinued about a decade ago. “We cannot confirm whether the product was shipped from our company or not,” Icom said in a statement Thursday.

The attacks dealt Hezbollah a severe physical blow, represented an embarrassing breach of its supply chains and illustrated Israel’s ability to strike deep within the militant group. Governments across the Middle East condemned it as a serious violation of Lebanon’s sovereignty, and the United States, the United Nations and Western countries appealed for calm as the region appeared, once again, to teeter on the brink of wide-scale war.

“This act of grave escalation will lead the region to what we have been warning against, which is an all-out war which will turn the region into scorched earth,” Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty said in Cairo on Wednesday, speaking alongside U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

Israeli officials have signaled in recent days that they were shifting the military’s focus from Gaza to Israel’s northern border. Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Wednesday that “the center of gravity is shifting northward,” according to Israel’s Kan radio, while Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, the Israel Defense Forces chief of staff, warned Hezbollah: “We have a great many capabilities that we haven’t used yet.”

Gallant said Thursday that he briefed U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin overnight on “IDF operations in the southern and northern arenas, focusing on Israel’s defense against Hezbollah threats.”

Tens of thousands of Israelis have been displaced from the north by Hezbollah attacks since October, and the Israeli government has come under intense pressure to create conditions that would allow them to return home safely. Israeli attacks in that time have displaced more than 113,000 people from southern Lebanon, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Hezbollah said Wednesday that it would continue its military operations against Israel to “support Gaza” but that cross-border strikes in recent days were “separate from the difficult reckoning that the criminal enemy must await for its massacre on Tuesday.”

The tit-for-tat attacks across the border continued Thursday, with Hezbollah claiming a strike in the area of Margaliot that it said hit an Israeli military position, causing “a number of deaths and injuries.”

Ziv Medical Center in the northern Israel town of Safed said it had received “six injured individuals” from the incident so far, five of whom were in “mild condition” and one in moderate condition. Rambam Hospital in Haifa said two wounded people from “a security incident in the north” were airlifted to its trauma unit and were being examined. The Israeli military declined to comment.

The IDF said Thursday it struck “Hezbollah terrorist infrastructure sites” as well as a Hezbollah weapons storage facility in southern Lebanon overnight. IDF artillery also struck “several areas in southern Lebanon,” the statement said.

The IDF also announced this week that an elite division that had fought in Gaza was being moved to its northern command. But it remains unclear whether the electronics attacks were a prelude to a full-scale war, which both sides have proved reluctant to launch for nearly a year.

A war would be devastating for Lebanon, already on its knees economically and still traumatized from a deadly 2020 explosion in its port. For Israel, a major offensive in Lebanon risks drawing in Hezbollah’s backer, Iran — and Hezbollah’s arsenal could overwhelm Israel’s missile defense systems.

Lebanon’s cabinet is slated to convene Thursday afternoon, and its Foreign Ministry dispatched an official to New York ahead of an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council on Friday.

Hezbollah began striking in Israel in October, after Israel launched its war on Gaza in retaliation for the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attacks. For months, the United States, Egypt and Qatar have been pushing unsuccessfully for Israel and Hamas to agree to a cease-fire deal, which, under the framework being discussed, would exchange Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners in a phased process meant to eventually end the war. But a new demand by Hamas has complicated the pursuit of a deal, The Post reported this month.

In Cairo on Wednesday, Blinken called on “all parties” to “refrain from any actions that could escalate the conflict.”

“We’re focused on getting this cease-fire over the finish line. That would also, I think, materially improve the prospects of actually defusing the situation in northern Israel and southern Lebanon,” he added.

Hamas and Egypt — as well as members of the opposition in Israel’s government and hostage families — have blamed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for obstructing a deal by introducing new demands in recent months.

In a statement Thursday, Hamas political bureau member Hussam Badran praised “the role of the Lebanese resistance in supporting the resistance in Gaza” and said reaching a cease-fire deal would require “serious American pressure on Netanyahu.”

The United States has continued to transfer billions of dollars in arms to Israel. The Post reported Wednesday that government watchdogs are scrutinizing the provision of weapons for Israel’s Gaza campaign.

Lior Soroka in Tel Aviv, Mohamad El Chamaa in Beirut, Hazem Balousha in Cairo and Annabelle Timsit in London contributed to this report.