Lebanon foreign minister says pager blasts an omen of wider war
Abdallah Bou Habib has said the deadly explosion of hundreds of pagers could be an omen of a wider conflict in the Middle East.
According to Lebanon’s National News Agency, the foreign minister warned of the incident’s gravity, “because it comes after Israeli threats to expand the focus of the war with Lebanon, which would plunge the region into a larger cycle of violence, and signal a wider war”.
Israel has ‘mapped’ Hezbollah geolocations through AI since 2010
Military analyst Elijah Magnier says the ongoing attacks on communication systems in Lebanon bear the hallmarks of an initial salvo before launching a major military operation.
“Normally in every war, the first attack is on a command-control base, and here the Israelis are attacking the control, which is the communication. Crippling communication is vital in any war because it is the main spine of the [enemy] army,” Magnier told Al Jazeera.
Hezbollah commanders and fighters will now have to revert to mobile phones, and “the Israelis can connect to that machine” and identify its location, he said.
“They have access to all the communication systems because they’ve drawn the map of the whole area as they’ve been working on this since 2010 using artificial intelligence,” Magnier noted. “Now with the system they have used, they waited more than 24 hours to destroy a second and different communication system that Hezbollah relied on.”
9 killed, more than 300 wounded in latest device explosions
A second wave of device blasts has killed nine people and wounded more than 300 in Lebanon, stoking fears of an all-out war in the Middle East.
According to state media, walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah members blew up in Beirut, with reports of similar blasts in southern and eastern Lebanon.
It came a day after the simultaneous explosion of hundreds of paging devices used by Hezbollah killed 12 people, including two children, and wounded up to 2,800 others across Lebanon, in an unprecedented attack blamed on Israel.
Lebanon’s National News Agency also said in two incidents, solar panel systems also exploded, leading to small fires that were extinguished.
UN chief calls for ‘maximum restraint’ after Lebanon explosions
United Nations chief Antonio Guterres is “deeply alarmed” by reports that a large number of communication devices exploded across Lebanon.
“The secretary-general urges all concerned actors to exercise maximum restraint to avert any further escalation,” his spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, said in a statement.
Dujarric also urged parties “to recommit to the full implementation of Security Council Resolution 1701”, referring to the one that ended the 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel.
You should have done more to stop Israel. Calling for restraint every time Israel commits another massacre isn't solving anything.
