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Handheld walkie-talkies used by Hizbollah were detonated across Lebanon on Wednesday, the militant group said, killing at least three people and injuring more than 100 a day after thousands of pagers exploded in the country.
Lebanese state news agency NNA said at least three people were killed by exploding devices in the town of Sohmor in the Bekaa Valley. More than 100 people were injured, the health ministry said, a number that is likely to climb.
At least one blast took place near a funeral in Beirut’s southern suburbs, organised by Hizbollah for several of the people killed on Tuesday, a Financial Times reporter witnessed. There were reports on Wednesday of other electronic devices exploding in Lebanon, including rooftop solar energy panels, according to NNA.
In the initial attack on Tuesday, thousands of pagers carried by the militant group’s members had detonated across Lebanon, killing 12 people including two children and injuring almost 2,800, according to health authorities.
Almost 300 of those wounded in Tuesday’s blasts remained in a critical condition on Wednesday.
Hizbollah has threatened retaliation against Israel for the initial attack, while Israel has not commented on the explosions. The two enemies have been engaged in cross-border fire since Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, prompting fears of a wider war.
Almost 24 hours after the pager explosions, Hizbollah said it had launched rockets at Israeli artillery positions across the border, the first strike since Tuesday’s attack raised the prospect of a wider regional conflagration.
Other explosions took place on Wednesday in Beirut, Tyre, Baalbek and the Bekaa Valley, as well as in scattered villages and towns in the south, according to NNA, which also said there was heavy surveillance drone traffic over the country’s south. These are all areas with a heavy Hizbollah presence.
Gruesome images circulated on social media for the second day running, showing fire-damaged cars and motorbikes, apartment buildings ablaze and bloodied people being rushed to hospitals in ambulances.
At the funeral in Beirut’s southern suburb of Ghobeiry, thousands of mourners had gathered for the funeral of a child, two Hizbollah members and a health worker killed in Tuesday’s blasts.
That funeral — already tense — was interrupted by a loud boom that echoed over the procession, sending mourners stampeding away in fear.
As ambulance sirens sounded, a man ran through the crowd shouting: “It exploded in his hand.” A Lebanese soldier stationed near the funeral, where weeping family members held up images of their slain relatives, said that “two devices had exploded”.