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What does the simultaneous explosion of thousands of booby-trapped pagers and walkie-talkies in two countries look like?
It starts with some 5,000 pagers shipped to the militant group Hezbollah by its enemy Israel, whose agents are believed to have planted explosives and metal balls into each.
Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, had spent years calling on the Iran-backed Lebanese group to ditch their use of mobile phones, worried they had been used to pinpoint the locations of top commandos assassinated by Israel.
‘Bury it. Put it in an iron box and lock it’, he urged followers in February.
The pagers, understood to have been ordered five months ago, were supposed to be a more secure, less high tech way to send messages without revealing its user’s whereabouts.
But when they beeped to announce the arrival of a message around 3.30pm on Tuesday afternoon, they exploded, many of them at till points and market stalls.
Two children and four healthcare workers were among the at least 12 people killed in the blasts, which left 2,800 people injured.
Many of them lost hands, fingers, or needed amputation.
The pager and walkie-talkie explosions are believed to be the result of a months-long operation by Israeli intelligence services (Picture: Metro Graphics)
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Just 24 hours later, walkie-talkies believed to be in possession of Hezbollah operatives, exploded, one of them at a funeral for some of the previous day’s victims.
Those blasts killed at least 25 people and wounded more than 600 more.
Explosions were heard in at least eight cities and towns in Lebanon, as well as Damascus, the capital of Syria, an ally of both Hezbollah and Iran.
Today Nasrallah warned Israel that ‘the resistance in Lebanon will not stop’, in reference to a rocket campaign it launched in support of Hamas in Gaza, in a speech broadcast a TVs and radios across Lebanon today.
Eight Lebanese towns and cities, and the Syrian capital of Damascus, were rocked by the explosion of communication devices on Tuesday and Wednesday (Picture: Metro Graphics)
A funeral was being held for four people in died in Tuesday’s pager blasts when another communication device exploded in Beirut (Picture: Houssam Shbaro/Anadolu via Getty Images)
But his words were followed by powerful blasts from sonic booms created by Israeli jets flying overhead.
Fears of escalation are felt most acutely on the streets of Lebanon, where the army carried out controlled explosions on suspicious devices, and locals have told journalists to take camera away, wary of further blasts.
With Israel moving troops to its northern border with Lebanon, and Hezbollah threatening ‘just punishment’, the conflict in Gaza may well be closer to an all-out regional conflict.
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Source:: Metro
