Hezbollah vows vengeance on Israel for pager blasts that left 12 dead on Tuesday.  UN rights chief demands accountability for Lebanon pager blasts.  All patients had lost fingers or had eye injuries, says doctor.

BEIRUT/GENEVA   -  At least 14 people are now dead and 450 injured from Wednesday’s walkie-talkie explosions in Lebanon, according to the country’s health ministry. Lebanese state media NNA earlier reported deaths in blasts in the towns of Sahmar in Rashaya and Western Bekaa in southern Lebanon.

The renewed attack comes just a day after a coordinated explosion of pagers killed 12 in Lebanon and left more than 2,800 people injured.

Dozens of ambulance crews from the Lebanese Red Cross were working to rescue and evacuate those injured after walkie-talkies exploded across the country on Wednesday.  More than 30 teams of Lebanese Red Cross emergency medics were working in southern Lebanon, the central Beqaa valley and the southern suburbs of Beirut. An extra 50 ambulance crews were on alert in Mount Lebanon and Beirut to help with evacuation efforts.

The Lebanese Civil Defense said it was also working to extinguish fires in 60 homes and shops that started after the walkie-talkies exploded, including one in a lithium battery store.  

Fifteen cars and dozens of motorcycles also caught fire as well as two fingerprint devices in the Nabatieh Governorate.

While talking about Tuesday’s pager attacks, Dr Nour El Osta, from the Hotel Dieu Hospital in Beirut, said.

“It was a normal day at the beginning of the day, until it wasn’t anymore,” she told BBC. “It unfortunately reminded us of the 4 August 2020 explosion [when more than 200 people were killed in Beirut port] but it was also different.”

She said this time around “we received too many similar injuries” and described it as being almost “repetitive”. “All patients had lost fingers or had eye injuries. It was something we never had seen before.”

Two patients had “severe injuries on their face and eyes,” she explained, and were being transported to other hospitals for surgery. Due to security concerns, we were not allowed to talk to the patients or their families, as they’re mainly members of Hezbollah.

Exploding pagers claimed the lives of 12 people in Lebanon, including two children, the country’s health minister said Wednesday, updating the toll a day after the blasts blamed on Israel.

Hundreds of the wireless devices exploded simultaneously across Lebanon on Tuesday, hours after Israel said it was broadening the aims of the Gaza war to include its fight against Hamas ally Hezbollah.

Israel has yet to comment on the unprecedented attacks.

On Wednesday, Lebanese Health Minister Firass Abiad said 12 people were killed and between 2,750 and 2,800 others were wounded, revising the tolls up from nine dead. “After checking with all the hospitals”, the toll was revised to “12 dead including two children”, Abiad told a news conference.

The dead included a girl and a boy as well as four health workers from private hospitals in Beirut’s southern suburbs, he said.

Hezbollah vowed on Wednesday to retaliate against Israel after hundreds of paging devices used by the group exploded in a deadly wave across Lebanon, raising fears of an all-out war.

There was no comment from Israel on the explosions that killed 12 people, including two children, and wounded up to 2,800 others.

Only hours before the blasts, Israel said it was broadening the aims of the Gaza war, sparked by Hamas’s October 7 attack, to include its fight against the Palestinian armed group’s ally Hezbollah.

Hezbollah said Israel was “fully responsible for this criminal aggression” and on Wednesday reiterated it would avenge the attack, while vowing to continue its fight against Israel in support of Hamas in the Gaza war.

Cross-border exchanges with Israeli forces were “ongoing and separate from the difficult reckoning that the criminal enemy must await for its massacre,” Hezbollah said on Telegram.

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah is due to give a televised address on Thursday.

The blasts killed two children and 10 other people, Lebanese Health Minister Firass Abiad said, putting the number of wounded at between 2,750 and 2,800 with some taken to Syria or Iran for treatment.

The influx of so many casualties all at once overwhelmed hospitals in Hezbollah strongholds.

At a Beirut hospital, doctor Joelle Khadra said “the injuries were mainly to the eyes and hands, with finger amputations, shrapnel in the eyes -- some people lost their sight.”

A doctor at another hospital in Beirut, requesting anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to the media, said he had worked through the night and that the injuries were “out of this world -- never seen anything like it”.

UN rights chief demands accountability for Lebanon pager blasts

Those responsible for a deadly wave of explosions across Lebanon targeting paging devices used by members of the Hezbollah  group “must be held to account”, the UN rights chief said Wednesday.

Hezbollah has accused Israel and vowed to retaliate over the explosions that killed 12 people, including two children, and wounded up to 2,800 others.

There was no immediate comment from Israel.

In a statement, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk described the blasts as “shocking”, and said their impact on civilians was “unacceptable”.

“The fear and terror unleashed is profound.”