People at a coffee shop in a southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, watch Hezbollah Secretary-General Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah deliver a televised speech Thursday condemning the attack that caused explosions in pagers and walkie-talkies. Photo by Wael Hamzeh/EPA-EFE
BEIRUT, Lebanon, Sept. 19 (UPI) — Hezbollah Secretary-General Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah said Thursday that Israel crossed “all the red lines” by detonating thousands of communication devices used by his group’s members, with the intention to kill some 5,000 of them within two minutes. He described the attack as a “big, unprecedented and harsh security strike” against his Iran-backed militant group.
Nasrallah, talking in a televised speech, said the attacks that Israel carried out on two Tuesday and Wednesday that targeted pagers and walkie-talkies recently distributed to thousands of Hezbollah members meant to pressure Lebanon and Hezbollah to stop the fighting along the southern border to secure the return of some 80,000 displaced settlers to northern Israel.
“The Lebanese front will not stop before the aggression on Gaza comes to an end,” he pledged while Israeli warplanes flew at low altitudes over Beirut, breaking the sound barriers.
According to new count by Lebanese Health Minister Firas Abid on Thursday, 35 people, including two children, were killed and nearly 3,000 were wounded in the pagers and walkie-talkies explosions that hot various Lebanese regions, particularly Hezbollah’s stronghold in the southern suburbs of Beirut as well as southern and eastern Lebanon.
Hezbollah said most were members of the group working in its various units and institutions.