A Lebanese Red Cross ambulance rushes wounded people to a hospital in Beirut on September 17, 2024, after explosions hit locations in several Hezbollah strongholds around the country amid ongoing cross-border tensions between Israel and Hezbollah fighters. Image Credit: AFP
Beirut: Eight people were killed when Hezbollah members’ paging devices exploded simultaneously across Lebanon on Tuesday, in what a source close to the militant movement said was an “Israeli breach” of its communications.
The explosions on Tuesday afternoon hit locations in several Hezbollah strongholds around the country, in the first such incident since the group began trading near-daily fire with Israel in support of ally Hamas.
Iran’s ambassador to Beirut was wounded in the explosion Tuesday but his injuries were not serious, state media reported.
“Iranian ambassador to Lebanon Mojtaba Amani was injured in a pager explosion,” state television said, adding that his wounds were “superficial” and that he was “conscious and in no danger”.
Earlier on Tuesday, Israel had announced a broadening of the aims of the war sparked by Hamas’s October 7 attacks to include its fight against Hezbollah along the northern border with Lebanon.
Until now, Israel’s objectives have been to crush Hamas and to bring home the hostages taken by Palestinian militants during the October 7 attacks that sparked the war.
“The political-security cabinet updated the goals of the war this evening, so that they include the following section: the safe return of the residents of the north to their homes,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said in a statement early Tuesday.
Since October, the unabating exchanges of fire between Israeli troops and Hamas ally Hezbollah in Lebanon have forced tens of thousands of people on both sides of the border to flee their homes
