Second Wave of Blasts Hits Lebanon as Hand-Held Radios Explode

At least 20 people were killed and more than 450 others wounded, Lebanese officials said, a day after pagers exploded across the country and killed 12 people, in an attack widely attributed to Israel.

A second wave of deadly blasts rocked Lebanon on Wednesday, as hand-held radios that had been covertly turned into explosive devices and carried by Hezbollah members blew up across the country, killing at least 20 people, wounding more than 450 others and shocking the nation.

It was the second coordinated attack against Hezbollah, the Lebanese armed group backed by Iran, and the explosions came as the country was burying its dead from the day before, when pagers exploded, killing at least 12 people and injuring 2,700 more, officials said.

Hezbollah blamed Israel for the pager attack, and American and other officials said Israel had hidden tiny explosives in a shipment of Taiwanese-made pagers imported into Lebanon.

The Israeli military neither claimed nor denied responsibility for the pager explosions, and it did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the latest attack. But Israeli officials issued statements on Wednesday signaling their intent to take more aggressive action to push Hezbollah forces away from Israel’s northern border.

Hezbollah has been exchanging cross-border strikes with Israel for 11 months, even as Israel battles Hezbollah’s ally, Hamas, in the Gaza Strip. Hezbollah began firing missiles and drones at Israel in the wake of the Hamas-led attacks on Oct. 7, prompting Israel to strike across Lebanon. For months, both sides have avoided all-out war.

But Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, said that Israel was “at the outset of a new period in this war, and we must adapt.”

“The center of gravity is moving north, which means we are diverting forces, resources and energy toward the north,” Mr. Gallant said in a statement on Wednesday that did not explicitly refer to the explosions in Lebanon.

The pagers blew up in people’s hands and pockets on Tuesday. Two Lebanese security officials and a Hezbollah official said some of the devices that exploded on Wednesday were hand-held radios belonging to Hezbollah members.

The two-way radios that exploded were larger and heavier than the pagers and, in some cases, set off larger fires, according to a New York Times analysis of the available visual evidence.

The Times reviewed three photos and one video to identify the communication devices involved in Wednesday’s attacks as the IC-V82, a two-way radio bearing the brand of the Japanese company ICOM. It is unclear where Hezbollah purchased the radios.

The Lebanese Telecommunications Ministry also said ICOM walkie-talkies had exploded and condemned what it called “the criminal act committed today by Israel.” The ministry said it had not licensed the devices.

One of the explosions happened at an outdoor funeral in Beirut’s southern suburbs, where thousands had gathered to mourn two Hezbollah fighters, a paramedic and a 12-year-old boy killed in the pager blasts. It sent people running for cover and scrambling to turn off their phones and other devices.

The Lebanese Red Cross said that 30 ambulance teams were responding to “multiple explosions” in different areas of the country, including in the south and east.

“I saw stuff today that you can only see in movies,” said Hussein Awada, 54, recounting how he watched as a man attempting to clear the road for ambulances in Beirut was gravely injured when his hand-held radio exploded.

“It took seconds — the thing just blew up in his hands,” Mr. Awada said. “Maybe tomorrow lighters will explode, too. If you want to light a cigarette, it will just explode in your hand.”

Fires engulfed at least 60 homes and shops, and dozens of cars and motorcycles, including in the Bekaa Valley and the southern suburbs of Beirut, said the Lebanese Civil Defense, an emergency rescue organization. Both areas are known as Hezbollah strongholds. Ambulances clogged the roads, and some hospitals in southern Lebanon were swamped with dozens of wounded patients, according to Lebanon’s state-run news agency.

“There are buildings burning right now in front of me,” Mortada Smaoui, 30, a resident of Beirut’s southern suburbs, said after a series of simultaneous explosions hit his neighborhood on Wednesday. He said that firefighters and soldiers were rushing to the scene.

Hezbollah said that eight of its members were killed by the exploding pagers on Tuesday. Lebanese officials said two other people and two children were also killed, including a 9-year-old girl, Fatima Abdullah, from central Lebanon.

She had just come home from school when a pager on the kitchen table began to beep, her aunt said. She had picked up the device to take it to her father when it exploded, mangling her face and leaving the room covered in blood, her aunt said.

At her funeral on Wednesday in the village of Saraain, mourners chanted: “The enemy killed us using this small device. They killed our child Fatima.”

The Taiwanese company some officials have named as the supplier of the pagers, Gold Apollo, on Wednesday sought to distance itself from the devices, saying that another manufacturer with a Hungarian address had made the model of pager as part of a licensing deal.

The pager explosions fanned fears of a wider Middle East war. “Israel is pushing the entire region toward the abyss of regional war,” Ayman Safadi, the Jordanian foreign minister, told reporters. “Such a war would have drastic ramifications not only for the region, but for the world.”

The U.S. secretary of state, Antony J. Blinken, said the United States did not know about the pager attack in advance and was not involved.

“We are still gathering the information and gathering the facts,” he said at a news conference in Cairo, Egypt’s capital, with his Egyptian counterpart, Badr Abdelatty. Mr. Blinken said the United States had been “very clear about the importance of all parties avoiding any steps that could further escalate the conflict that we’re trying to resolve in Gaza.”

The United Nations Security Council planned to convene an emergency meeting on Friday to discuss the wave of attacks in Lebanon, according to Slovenia, which holds the Council’s rotating presidency this month. Algeria, the only Arab country on the Council, had requested the meeting.

Hezbollah has said it will not stop fighting until Israel ends its campaign against Hamas, an Iran-backed ally, in Gaza. More than 160,000 people in Lebanon and Israel have been displaced by the cross-border strikes between Israeli troops and Hezbollah forces.

Israeli leaders have faced growing frustration from the tens of thousands of displaced Israelis unable to return home. In a short video statement on Wednesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, “I already said that we would return the residents of the north securely to their homes, and that is exactly what we will do.”

Reporting was contributed by Anushka Patil, Ronen Bergman, Sheera Frenkel, Farnaz Fassihi, Christiaan Triebert and Aric Toler.

Our Coverage of the Middle East Crisis

• Device Attacks in Lebanon: A day after pagers exploded across Lebanon, a second wave of deadly blasts rocked the country, as hand-held radios carried by Hezbollah members blew up.
• Israel’s Audacious Attack: What did Israel’s device attacks in Lebanon accomplish, and what did they cost? “The Daily” explains.
• Chaos Inside Hezbollah: The attacks targeting Hezbollah’s devices caused thousands of injuries, piercing the group’s rank and file and raising questions about how it will respond.
• Hamas’s Future in Gaza: One of Hamas’s most senior officials said in an interview that the militant group expects to play a decisive role in the enclave when the war with Israel is over.
• A Struggle to Celebrate: Since the Oct. 7 attacks and the start of the war in Gaza, marking major holidays has been completely upended for three religions in the region.