Reports out of Lebanon say that at least 2,800 people are injured - with at least nine dead and 170 critically hurt - when pagers carried by alleged members of Hezbollah blew up in synchronous explosions on their belts.
(Hezbollah is the Iran-sponsored Shia terror group that controls much of southern Lebanon.)
From CNN:
'We hold the Israeli enemy fully responsible for this criminal attack,' Hezbollah said in a statement released Tuesday evening, vowing retribution.
'This criminal and treacherous enemy will definitely receive a fair punishment for this sinful assault, both in ways that are expected and unexpected,' Hezbollah added.
The
militant[Muslim terrorist] 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.The Lebanese government also blamed Israel for the explosions, condemning the attack as 'criminal Israeli aggression.'
Numerous videos show military-aged men keeling over as the pagers exploded. I will show a few of the less graphic posts here.
[Warning: I'm cutting out as much gore as possible but these videos depict serious bodily harm]
As I said, these are the videos with the LEAST amount of blood. Some of the injured were truly mangled by this.
One more humorous injury was Iran's ambassador to Lebanon, however:
Pagers are harder to track than cell phones (especially smartphones, which are essentially devices that spy on you everywhere at all times), which is why a terror group would use them for basic communications.
There are two theories on how the pagers exploded.
They were rigged with small charges that detonated when a specific number paged the devices.
The pagers had onboard malware installed through a hack that caused them to overheat and blow up (this is what Lebanon state media NNA is reporting).
If you've seen lithium-ion batteries in smartphones explode (and they are much bigger than pager batteries), you know they don't have the explosive force as seen in these videos. Lithium tends to burn hot and spew flame like a dragon, but you can usually survive even if the phone is right in your face.
Example:
"Hacked pagers" sounds nice because it allows Lebanon/Hezbollah to save face, but the reality is likely that Israel intercepted these pagers or posed as a fake distributor (in which case they collected Hezbollah's money from whatever orders they made too!), and sent them out to be distributed to terrorists by Hezbollah themselves.
Local hospitals are currently overwhelmed.
If this was an Israeli operation, then points for ingenuity. I don't have to praise Israel endlessly or agree with all of their politics/military operations in order to see that this was an ingenious way of targeting terrorists with minimal civilian casualties.
The loss of life should not be celebrated, but it's unusual to see restraint and cleverness being employed in such a way in war.
Which is why there are already memes. Lots and lots of memes.
What a time to be alive.
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