Pager explosions injure thousands in Lebanon, officials say, as Hezbollah blames Israel

(CNN) — Thousands of people were injured Tuesday and several killed when their pagers exploded almost simultaneously across Lebanon, officials said, with Hezbollah confirming some of its members were wounded and blaming the attack on Israel.

A child was among at least nine killed in the blasts, which injured around 2,800 people, Lebanese Health Minister Firass Abiad said. At least 170 people are in a critical condition, he said, though the nature of the other injuries is unclear.

Videos circulating on social media and news agencies appear to show powerful explosions in various locations. In one CCTV video, a man can be seen picking out fruit in a supermarket when an explosion tears his bag to shreds. Bystanders can be seen running away as they hear the explosion, while the man drops to the ground clutching his lower abdomen. After several seconds, he can be heard groaning in pain.

Other social media videos showed large numbers of injured people, including at least one child. Those wounded were covered in blood, some with facial and hand injuries as well as flesh wounds.

The extraordinary incident comes amid increased hostility between Hezbollah and Israel, and raises tensions in the region further. Both Lebanon and Hezbollah have blamed Israel for the explosions.

“This criminal and treacherous enemy will definitely receive a fair punishment for this sinful assault, both in ways that are expected and unexpected,” Hezbollah said Tuesday evening, vowing retribution.

The militant group had earlier confirmed on its Telegram channel that “workers” in various Hezbollah institutions were affected by the explosions, with a “large number” of people injured.

Iran’s Ambassador to Lebanon, Mojtaba Amani, was among those wounded in Beirut, along with two embassy employees, according to Iranian state media. Amani has a superficial injury and is currently under observation in the hospital, state media IRNA reported, citing his wife.

Lebanon’s Prime Minister Najib Mikati slammed the attack as “a serious violation of Lebanese sovereignty and a crime by all standards” in a cabinet meeting on Tuesday, according to the state-run NNA news outlet.

The Israeli military, which has engaged in tit-for-tat strikes with Hezbollah since the start of the war in Gaza last October, said it would not be commenting on the incident.

In a statement following the pager explosions, the Israel Defense Forces also said it had no changes in its advice to Israeli civilians. “The public are asked to remain alert and vigilant, and any change in policy will be updated immediately,” it said in a statement.

‘Hacked’ pagers spur theories of supply chain attack and cybersecurity breach

The wave of explosions affected several areas in Lebanon, particularly the southern suburbs of Beirut, according to Lebanon’s Internal Security Forces.

State media NNA reported that “hacked” pager devices exploded in the towns of Ali Al-Nahri and Riyaq in Lebanon’s central Beqaa valley, resulting in a significant number of injuries. The locations are Hezbollah strongholds.

Experts have shared two competing theories as to how hundreds of pagers could have exploded simultaneously.

One theory is that there was a cybersecurity breach, causing the pagers’ lithium batteries to overheat and detonate.

Another is that this was a “supply chain attack,” where the pagers were tampered with during the manufacturing and shipping process.

David Kennedy, a former US National Security Agency intelligence analyst, told CNN that the explosions seen in videos shared online appear to be “too large for this to be a remote and direct hack that would overload the pager and cause a lithium battery explosion.”

Kennedy said he found the second theory to be more plausible.

“It’s more likely that Israel had human operatives… in Hezbollah… The pagers would have been implanted with explosives and likely only to detonate when a certain message was received,” he said.

“The complexity needed to pull this off is incredible. It would have required many different intelligence components and execution. Human intelligence (HUMINT) would be the main method used to pull this off, along with intercepting the supply chain in order to make modifications to the pagers,” he added.

Lebanese officials have urged citizens who possess pagers to discard them and warned hospitals to be on “high alert,” and asked health workers to urgently report to work to assist with the “large number of injured people.”

The explosions come after Israel’s security cabinet voted Monday to add another war objective to its ongoing conflict with Hamas and Hezbollah: ensuring the safe return of residents from communities along its border with Lebanon to their homes.

“Israel will continue to act to implement this objective,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said Monday.

After nearly a year of cross-border exchanges between Hezbollah and Israel, tens of thousands of people have been displaced from their homes in southern Lebanon and northern Israel.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

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CNN’s Sarah El Sirgany, Pauline Lockwood and Hamdi Alkhshali contributed reporting.