Death toll from Hezbollah pager explosions in Lebanon rises to 12

Lebanese Health Minister, Wael Abu Faour said that the death toll following the mishap when pagers, purported to belong to the Hezbollah, exploded on Tuesday has increased to 12, which comprised of two children and four health care personnel. 
 
Major Firas Abiad said at a news briefing that out of the 2,800 people who were injured 64 percent required some sort of surgery on their face, eye or hands, and many had limbs amputated. 
 
Hezbollah, an Iran-backed group, accused Israel of carrying out the attack, and said it will pay a ‘severe price’. 
 
Although, no official statement was issued by the Israel regarding such allegations, media citing US and Lebanese sources, reported of targeted Israeli agents had put small amounts of explosives in recently imported pagers. 
 
The United Nations, US and UK have called for restraint and non-use of force in anticipation for an escalated conflict. 
 
Some of the activities that undermine the quest for to achieve this are: Israel leaders declare readiness to escalate military campaign to force tens of thousands of displaced persons form north back to their homes 11 months of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah is due to the war in Gaza. 
 
Hezbollah claimed it is fighting in support of Hamas which is another Iranian ally and is also a banned terror organisation in Israel and many other western states and the group said it will halt its attacks as soon as the hostilities in Gaza cease. 
 

 Warning: This story includes some aspects which some persons can call shocking 

 Hezbollah’s thousand pagers, which were in the shops, homes, and cars, and on the streets, exploded on Tuesday afternoon and the hospitals across Lebanon were flooded with the dead and the wounded. 
 
For more information, reactions from survivors have been heartbreaking but the words of a Lebanese writer, politician and former ambassador to Jordan, Tracy Chamoun were even more devastating when she described the aftermath of Tuesday’s explosions ‘horrifying’. 
 
She was driving in a car through a flyover in the southern suburbs of Beirut which is home to Hezbollah when she noticed people, most of whom were men, lying on a road below. 
 
“When they began approaching these people to take them to hospital, all hell broke loose, as cars were just moved, aside to allow motorbikes and cars with people who were bleeding to be taken to the hospital,” she said. “One of the injured men who I saw had his eye blown out. Another one had half of his face ripped off. ” 
 
Hezbollah has not released information as to what transpired but it is understood that the organization has a long-standing policy of using pagers for communications because the leadership of the organization believes that the mobile phones can be tapped by the Israelis or monitored by the Israeli intelligence services. 

 Ms Chamoun added that the pagers had produced a beep sound before exploding in order to persuade the people to take the pager out of their pocket or from the desk and hold it to their ears. 
 
According to the New York Times and news agency Reuters, US and Lebanese sources said that in pact with Gold Apollo, a Taiwan-based electronics firm, Israel inserted tiny amounts of explosives onto at least 3,000 pagers, which were ordered by Hezbollah this year. 
 ”The Mossad inserted a board within that has explosives and an element that receives a code It is almost impossible to discover it through any method,” one Lebanese security source said to Reuters news. 
 
The founder of Gold Apollo said the firm had no hand in the blasts, and that it entered into a business relationship with another firm based in Budapest, BAC Consulting, which manufactured the devices and used its name. BBC has tried to contact BAC. 
 
 
Axiom on the other hand quoted US officials to have stated that israel had decided to blow up the pagers for fear its secret operation may have been compromised. ‘‘It was a use it or lose it moment in the tech space,’‘ an official said of the timing. 

Lebanon’s health minister said an eight-year-old girl and an 11-year-old boy died, as well as several health care workers from Dahiyeh, in southern Beirut, who used pagers. 
 
Speaking of the injured, the wound victims reached 2,800 of which 750 were in south Lebanon, 150 in Bekaa and the remaining 1,850 in Beirut and its surroundings he said. 
 
Mr Abiad opined that the majority of the patients are on the intensive care especially because some of the injuries are those that affect breath. Some had specific injuries such as injuries involving bleeding which include brain haemorrhage. 
 
The recent attacks left Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon, Mojtaba Amani, a bit injured and although his family and the Iranian officials reported him being in a good and stable condition. 
 
During the interview with the BBC the ophthalmologist of the Mount Lebanon University Hospital in Beirut stated that in the previous 24 hours there it was ‘a nightmare’. 
 
“Sadly, we could not preserve many eyes,” said Dr Elias Warrak recalling that between 60 to 70 percent of the patients lost at least an eye. 
 
“With some of the patients, we had to enucleate both eyes; it kills me; I have never enucleated as many eyes in the last 25 years of practice as many as I did yesterday. ” 
 
Since Tuesday afternoon, Hezbollah declared the death of twelve of its fighters, including Ali Ammar’s son, a Hezbollah Member of Parliament. But it has not named the locations and circumstances, stating only that they were ‘martyred on the road to Jerusalem’ – a slogan it has been regularly employing to describe the fighters killed in confrontations with Israel. 
 
The only death which the group directly linked to a pager blast was that of an al-Rassoul Al-Aazam Hospital employee in the southern sector of Beirut. 
 
Hezbollah declared in its Wednesday statement that the group will remain active “in support of Gaza” and “for the defense of Lebanon”. 
“This path is continuous and additional to the serious account that the criminal enemy needs to pay for the genocide it committed on Tuesday over the Lebanese people, their families and fighters,” it further stated. 
 
European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said in a statement that “current escalation is absolutely unacceptable and it is dangerous the situation is becoming even more dangerous. 
 
She called on all the stakeholders to “desist from any provocation to perform any more action or warmongering that may lead to more extensive war which no one can sustain”. 
 
US Secretary Antony Blinken said that his nation – Israel’s prime ally – had not been aware of or involved in the blasts.

When asked which of the two would help to decrease tensions in the region, he responded at a news conference with his Egyptian counterpart in Cairo saying that it would be possible to negotiate for a Gaza ceasefire deal between the Israelis and Hamas. 
 
‘We continue to be very conscious and very clear to all parties that nobody should do anything to take this conflict which we are trying to solve in Gaza to other fronts,’ he said. 
 
As far as any such claims are concerned, Israel has not entered any kind of response. However, the Israeli military cited the head of its Northern Command, MG Ori Gordin, as saying forces were “intent on changing the security equation as soon as possible” on the border with Lebanon.