CAIRO — Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah blamed Israel on Thursday for the explosion of electronic devices across Lebanon this week, calling the operation an “act of war” and vowing to respond, as the Israeli military signaled it was moving ahead with plans for a new phase of the conflict along the two countries’ border.
“It is an act of war against the people of Lebanon, Lebanon’s sovereignty. It is a declaration of war,” Nasrallah said in a televised address, his first remarks since pagers used by Hezbollah began exploding simultaneously on Tuesday, followed by the detonation of hundreds of walkie-talkies and other devices Wednesday.
As he spoke, the rumble of warplanes and large sonic booms could be heard over Beirut. “They will face a severe reckoning,” he said of Israel, adding that the attacks, which killed at least 37 and injured nearly 3,000, had dealt an “unprecedented blow” both to Lebanon and his organization, the country’s most powerful political and military force.
Israeli authorities, who rarely discuss operations in other countries, have declined to comment on whether Israel was responsible. But the sophisticated and complex operation bore the hallmarks of Israel’s intelligence agency, Mossad, which has a history of carrying out targeted assassinations abroad.
U.S. officials have acknowledged that Israel was behind the attack. Two U.S. officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive subject said the Israelis did not inform the United States about the specifics before the attack took place but told Washington afterward through intelligence channels.
On Thursday, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Israel had entered “a new phase of the war” focused on its northern border, and the Israeli military announced that its chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, had approved plans “for the northern arena.”
Soon after, the Israel Defense Forces began ramping up strikes across southern Lebanon, with more than 50 carried out late Thursday, the Lebanese state news agency reported. Hezbollah also claimed strikes on Israeli military positions, and the IDF said two soldiers were killed Thursday as a result of attacks in northern Israel.
The militant group began striking Israel in October after the Israeli military launched its war in the Gaza Strip in retaliation for the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7. Since then, the two sides have engaged in near-daily cross-border fire, including a rocket attack in July that killed 12 children in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Days later, Israel assassinated a senior Hezbollah commander near Beirut, raising fears of a wider conflict.
But Nasrallah struck a defiant note Thursday, saying that the group’s operations will not stop until Israel ends the war in Gaza. Detonating explosives in civilian areas — including supermarkets, houses and on crowded streets — was a “crime,” he said, adding that most senior Hezbollah officials did not carry the types of devices that exploded.
Still, the operation marked an embarrassing breach of the group’s supply chain, and the explosions also injured the Iranian ambassador to Lebanon.
Iran, which is Hezbollah’s main backer, informed the United Nations on Thursday that it planned to respond and that it held Israel responsible for the ambassador’s injuries, the semiofficial Tasnim news agency reported.
Taiwanese pager manufacturer Gold Apollo, whose logo was seen on some of the destroyed pagers, said it did not make the devices that exploded. The company said in a statement that the pagers in question were “entirely handled” by a Hungarian company called BAC Consulting KFT. BAC did not respond to requests for comment, and Hungarian government spokesman Zoltan Kovacs said “the referenced devices have never been in Hungary.”
Images from the scenes of the explosions also showed walkie-talkies bearing the name of Icom, a Japanese manufacturer of radio equipment, which said the model in question had been discontinued about a decade ago. “We cannot confirm whether the product was shipped from our company or not,” Icom said in a statement Thursday.
Beirut’s international airport banned passengers from carrying pagers and walkie-talkies onto any aircraft, Lebanon’s state news agency reported.
In the capital’s southern suburbs, where support for Hezbollah is strong, residents said they feel vulnerable and exposed, with a sense of unease sweeping across their neighborhoods. The attacks have eroded the once-solid sense of security they felt living far from the front lines in southern Lebanon.
At the same time, the community of supporters is frustrated with Nasrallah and is calling for a more decisive response, one resident said, speaking on the condition of anonymity for security reasons.
The explosions, which began on Tuesday afternoon when thousands of pagers used by Hezbollah members beeped simultaneously before erupting, sent people streaming into hospitals across Lebanon, many having lost eyes or hands or suffered serious abdominal injuries.
On Wednesday afternoon, a new round of detonations — involving two-way radios and “fingerprint analysis devices,” according to Lebanon’s civil defense — damaged or set fire to homes, shops and vehicles across the country. At least one of the explosions occurred in the Beirut suburbs at a funeral held by Hezbollah for people who were killed the day before.
According to Lebanon’s Health Ministry, 12 people were killed by the blasts on Tuesday and 25 in the explosions Wednesday. Among the casualties were women, children and the elderly, as well as medical workers and civil servants.
“This event has severely disrupted Lebanon’s already fragile health system,” the head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said Thursday.
Israeli strikes since October have displaced more than 113,000 people from southern Lebanon, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Hezbollah attacks have also displaced tens of thousands of Israelis from the north, and the government is under intense pressure to create conditions that would allow them to return home.
Refael Franco, former deputy head of Israel’s National Cyber Directorate, said the attacks have bought Israel time to decide whether to wage a full-scale war. For Israel, a major offensive in Lebanon risks drawing in Iran — and Hezbollah’s arsenal could overwhelm Israel’s missile defense systems.
Franco said the operation targeting communications devices was probably made up of several parts: “Studying Hezbollah’s entire supply chain; then making it so that Nasrallah was convinced that the group’s communications systems needed to be swapped out; then, third, ensuring that Hezbollah buys — from all the other alternatives — the beepers from the operating supplier.”
Nasrallah’s decision earlier this year to order Hezbollah members to stop using cellphones, fearing their vulnerability to hacking, opened up the opportunity for an attack. The group’s commanders might now attempt to reduce online communications and instead meet in person, Franco suggested — a scenario that could also leave Hezbollah more susceptible to assassination attempts.
Separately on Thursday, Israel’s internal intelligence agency, Shin Bet, and the Israeli police announced in a joint statement that an Israeli man was indicted over his alleged role in an Iranian assassination plot targeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other senior figures.
But in Jerusalem, there were few signs that Israel was bracing for war.
“Israel is in a ‘keep calm and carry on’ mode,” said Jonathan Rynhold, head of the political studies department at Bar-Ilan University. He and his wife were headed into Jerusalem’s Old City on Thursday.
“There is this sort of steely determination,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean we are not nervous.”
Rubin and Soroka reported from Tel Aviv and El Chamaa from Beirut. Ellen Nakashima in Washington, Rachel Chason in Jerusalem, Kareem Fahim in Beirut, Hazem Balousha in Cairo and Annabelle Timsit in London contributed to this report.