At least three people have been killed and hundreds wounded as more explosions have hit Beirut and across Lebanon – with hand-held radios used by Hezbollah said to have been targeted.
It comes a day after exploding pagers killed 12 and injured thousands in a attackHezbollah has blamed on Israel.
The walkie-talkies detonated late on Wednesday afternoon across the country’s south and in the southern suburbs of the capital Beirut, a security source told Reuters.
Three people were killed in Lebanon’s Bekaa region in the east of the country in the latest device blasts, the state news agency reported on Wednesday. The security source said that hundreds had been injured. Many of the wounds were said to the stomach and hands.
At least one of the blasts took place near a funeral organised by Iran-backed Hezbollah for those killed during the pager explosions. In a video on social media, a blast occurs somewhere the body of a Hezbollah member body, knocking him to the ground and sending the crowd around him running.
Pictures also showed broken and singed communication devices amid scenes of destruction.
The hand-held radios were purchased by Hezbollah five months ago, around the same time that the pagers were bought, the security source said.
Israel’s spy agency Mossad, which has a long history of sophisticated operations on foreign soil, planted explosives inside pagers imported by the Iran-backed Hezbollah months before Tuesday’s detonations, a senior Lebanese security source and another source told Reuters.
The death toll rose to 12, including two children, Lebanese Health Minister Firass Abiad said on Wednesday. Tuesday’s attack wounded nearly 3,000 people, including Iran’s envoy to Beirut.
A Taiwanese pager maker denied that it had produced the pager devices which exploded in an audacious attack that raised the prospect of a full-scale war between the Iran-backed Hezbollah and Israel.
Gold Apollo said the devices were made by under licence by a company called BAC, based in Hungary’s capital Budapest.
