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SvennoJ on 17 September 2024
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Airlines halt Middle East flights over Israel, Lebanon tensions

British Airways has suspended flights to Israel for Wednesday. Air France announced it’s suspending flights connecting Paris with Beirut and Tel Aviv through Thursday because of security concerns.

German airline group Lufthansa also said it’s suspending all flights to Tel Aviv and Tehran through to Thursday, as tensions in the region soar following pager explosions across Lebanon.

“Due to the recent change in the security situation, the Lufthansa Group airlines have decided to suspend all connections to and from Tel Aviv [TLV] and Tehran [IKA] with immediate effect,” it said in a statement. “This applies up to and including September 19. During this period, the Israeli and Iranian airspace will also be bypassed by all Lufthansa Group Airlines.”

Lufthansa added that it was closely monitoring the situation and “will assess it further in the coming days”.

 

Hundreds of ambulances and medics involved after Lebanon attacks

The Lebanese Red Cross says it provided 150 units to hospitals across Lebanon through its blood banks and said centres are accommodating those who still wish to donate, after simultaneous explosions of pagers across Lebanon killed nine people and wounded more than 2,700 others.

The Red Cross said it responded with “130 ambulances and more than 500 EMTs” (emergency medical technicians), shortly after the incident.

In a post on X, it shared a video of ambulances and volunteer medics.

Unlikely pager batteries alone caused deaths and injuries

Experts were mystified by the explosions in Lebanon but some doubted the battery itself would have been enough to cause the blasts.

Paul Christensen, an expert in lithium-ion battery safety at Newcastle University, said the level of damage caused by the pager blasts seemed inconsistent with known cases of such batteries failing in the past.

“What we’re talking about is a relatively small battery bursting into flames. We’re not talking of a fatal explosion here. I’d need to know more about the energy density of the batteries, but my intuition is telling me that it’s highly unlikely,” he said.

SMEX, a Lebanese digital rights organisation, said Israel could have exploited a weakness in the device to cause it to explode. It said the pagers could also have been intercepted before reaching Hezbollah and either tampered with electronically or implanted with an explosive device.

Israeli intelligence forces have previously placed explosives in personal phones to target enemies. Hackers have also demonstrated the ability to inject malicious code into devices, causing them to overheat and explode in some instances.


Hospitals across Lebanon overwhelmed with casualties from pager blasts

Hospitals across Lebanon are treating an influx of patients after exploding pagers wounded nearly 3,000 people on Tuesday.

Here’s how some witnesses described the situation:

  • At one hospital in Beirut’s southern suburbs, an AFP correspondent saw people being treated in a car park on thin mattresses, with medical gloves on the ground and ambulance stretchers covered in blood.
  • At Mount Lebanon Hospital outside Beirut, a Reuters reporter saw motorcycles rushing to the emergency room and people with bloodied hands screaming in pain.
  • In southern Lebanon, the head of the Nabatieh public hospital, Hassan Wazni, told Reuters that about 40 wounded people were being treated at his facility. The wounds included injuries to the face, eyes and limbs.


People gather outside the American University hospital after the arrival of several people who were wounded by exploding handheld pagers, in Beirut, Lebanon on Tuesday


‘People were exploding in the streets’

There is a lot of anticipation in Lebanon as people are waiting to see how Hezbollah is going to retaliate to this vast attack. It’s maybe the first time in the history, of the confrontation between Hezbollah and Israel, that Lebanon has seen such an attack.

People were exploding in the streets.

Of course, in the past, people saw drone attacks, warplane attacks, huge explosions, but this is the first time that such devices are exploding with people [holding them]. This is a matter of concern to many people.

Because it’s not isolated from the front in the south of Lebanon and especially with Israel threatening over the past days that it could put Lebanon’s front as a main goal in its war objectives.