Hezbollah vows to retaliate after pager attack kills nine

Officials in Lebanon and Syria blame Israel for the explosions

- ALEXANDER BUTLER, TOM WATLING, BEL TREW

Thousands of handheld pagers used by Hezbollah militants exploded in Lebanon and in parts of Syria yesterday, killing at least nine people and wounding more than 3,000. About 200 people are in a critical condition.

Hezbollah officials pointed the finger at Israel in what appeared to be a complex attack. The Lebanese health minister Firas alAbyad told The Independent that an eight-year-old girl was among the dead. The detonated pagers were a model brought into use by Hezbollah recently, security sources said. Mojtaba Amani, the Iranian ambassador to Lebanon, is one of those said to be injured by the blasts.

Another Hezbollah official from the group said the son of one of a prominent legislator, Ali Ammar Mahdi, was killed when the device he was carrying exploded.

Mr Al-Abyad, speaking at an emergency press conference in the Lebanese capital of Beirut, reported that around 100 hospitals have received casualties after yesterday’s attack. The majority of those injured so far have suffered wounds to the face or arms, he added, and in some cases the abdomen.

Hezbollah vowed to retaliate against Mossad, the Israeli spy agency. “This is not a security targeting of one, two or three people. This is a targeting of an entire nation,” senior Hezbollah official Hussein Khalil said while paying his condolences for Mr Ammar’s son.

Mossad planted a small amount of explosives inside 5000 Taiwan-made pagers ordered by Hezbollah months before yesterday’s detonations, a senior Lebanese security source and another source told Reuters.