Watch: Hezbollah holds funeral for four killed in Lebanon pager explosions as walkie-talkies targeted
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Your support makes all the difference.Watch live as Hezbollah holds a funeral on Wednesday, 18 September, for four of those killed when pagers used by the group's members exploded simultaneously across Lebanon on Tuesday.
Twelve people including two children were killed and nearly 3,000 were wounded after the handheld devices simultaneously detonated across Lebanon and Syria in the afternoon.
It came as communications devices used by Hezbollah detonated late Wednesday afternoon across the country’s south and in the southern suburbs of the capital Beirut, a security source and a witness said.
A source in Hezbollah confirmed that walkie-talkies used by the group were being targeted.
A senior security source said that the explosions were small in size, similar to yesterday’s attack, and said that security agencies would investigate the matter further.
Israel decided to blow up the devices carried by the militia group earlier than planned over fears the operation would be discovered, US officials said.
“It was a use it or lose it moment,” one US official told Axios about the reasoning Israel gave Washington for the timing of the attack.
A Lebanese security source claimed Israel’s spy agency Mossad planted explosives in thousands of the devices months before they exploded.
The same source claimed the beepers - believed to have been made by a Hungarian company with a licence to use Taiwan-based Gold Apollo’s brand - were modified “at the production level”.
The Iran-backed militant group has vowed to retaliate against Israel, whose military declined to comment on the blasts.
Hezbollah, which controls southern Lebanon, forms part of Iran’s so-called “axis of resistance”, which opposes Western and Israeli influence in the region.
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