Ffirst, on tuesday, there were pagers going off. On Wednesday, walkie-talkies began to be detonated, along with other electronic devices. Fear has gripped all areas across Lebanon—especially in Shia communities where Hezbollah is present—as tools designed to be held in the hand and close to the face remove fingers from hands and gouge out eyes.
“We were confused at first,” Joumana, who was visiting loved ones at a hospital in the Lebanese capital, Beirut on Wednesday, told TIME. “It sounded like a gunshot. Then we saw cars, ambulances and injured people.”
The devices are believed to have been targeted by members of the militant and political group Hezbollah, whose members were given pagers, and forced walkie-talkies to serve as aids. If the bigger goal was fueling fears, the success of the two-pronged attack was evident throughout Beirut.
The death toll stands at 37, including children. Of the approximately 3,000 people admitted to 90 hospitals across the country, approximately 300 are still in critical condition on Thursday, according to Lebanon’s Minister of Public Health Firas Abiad. The Lebanese Red Cross provided more than 200 units of blood to the wounded; blood banks were full of donors.
Read more: 6 Questions About Deadly Pager Attacks in Lebanon, Answered
Many liken the twin attacks to “terrorism,” because of their impact on the Lebanese people, and their terrifying nature. Ever since Al Qaeda announced itself to the world with the back-to-back bombings of two US embassies in East Africa in 1998, “one-two” attacks have been a popular way to increase fear and uncertainty. When the US occupied Iraq, a car bomb was often followed by a second suicide bomb maybe half an hour later, intended to increase the death toll by taking the lives of those who rushed to help.
“There is no world where the explosion of hundreds, if not thousands, of pagers is not an indiscriminate attack prohibited by international law,” said Mai El-Sadany, a human rights lawyer and executive director of the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy. , wrote in X. “When those pagers were released, there was no way of knowing whether they would be in shopping malls, homes, or busy streets.”
Israel has neither confirmed nor denied involvement, but multiple media accounts and security officials point the finger at Tel Aviv.
Mourning Tuesday’s attack, no one seemed to be expecting Wednesday.
The funeral was taking place in Ghobeiry, a Shia neighborhood south of Beirut where Hezbollah enjoys local support, when an explosive device sent the crowd into chaos. “I almost got hit,” said Joao Sousa, a freelance photographer covering the event.
Lebanon’s Ministry of Public Health has called all the medical staff available in the country to go to hospitals on Tuesday to deal with the large number of cases. Adding to the second wave of casualties, a medical officer at one of Beirut’s top hospitals says the backlog of operations for Tuesday’s wounded will take until the end of Thursday to clear.
On Wednesday, his hospital admitted two more patients. “One was a victim from yesterday and the other was from the day before because he needed advanced care,” said Salah Zeineddine, medical officer at the American University of Beirut Medical Center (AUBMC).
“We remain vigilant and try to eliminate the congestion by providing quick and immediate care to the injuries we had in the last two days and the cases of release,” said Zeineddine. “We don’t accept cold or organized cases just to save our resources in case anything happens.”
The world lives on eggshells. Back-to-back attacks have left many worried that another could be on the cards. On Thursday, Lebanese authorities banned pagers and walkie-talkies from flights departing from Beirut’s international airport. Industries that rely on electronics like these are also changing communication strategies in the short term—one event planning company told TIME that it will replace its walkie-talkies used at weddings with WhatsApp.
It is clear that Hezbollah was the target of the military in this attack. But the organization is at once an armed, war-torn military and a political party with a social aid movement. It exists to oppose Israel, as it existed, with the help of Iran, in response to Israel’s attack in 1982 during the country’s civil war of 1975-1990, and to take over southern Lebanon, which lasted until 2000. Both sides also fought a deadly 34-day war in 2006.
Read more: The Coming Israel-Hezbollah War
But the nature of the unprecedented attack surprised many, and raised questions about how it was carried out. New York Times published a detailed account of a Mossad front company producing pagers as part of a “sophisticated strategy” that many likened to the modern-day Trojan Horse. The highest casualties were Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon, Mojtaba Amani, who lost one eye and injured the other.
Israel and Hezbollah have been engaged in a low-level war for nearly a year, regularly trading missiles and rocket fire across the border since an October 7 attack on Israel by Hamas, an Iranian ally, that killed 1,200 people. The daily fire killed around 600 Lebanese, including more than 100 civilians, according to the report. local health authorities. Attacks from Lebanon at the time killed 46 Israelis, civilians and soldiers, according to the Israeli government.
Tens of thousands also fled their homes on both sides of the border and never returned.
Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah has said his group will stop firing rockets and missiles at Lebanon’s southern border once a deal is reached in Gaza, where at least 40,000 people have been killed, according to Hamas-run Gaza’s health ministry, US figures. and the UN deems credible. Meanwhile, Israeli officials have recently launched a military campaign to repatriate Israelis from their homes in the north and have begun discussing plans to expand the war against Hezbollah—which so far has focused mostly on southern Lebanon and the eastern parts of the country.
Hezbollah has vowed to respond strongly. “This powerful blow did not and will not bring us down,” said Nasrallah. “We will be stronger, stronger, and more capable.”
Meanwhile, rioters in Lebanon await Israel’s next move. In the hours following Nasrallah’s speech on Thursday, Israel flew planes over Beirut and attacked planes in southern Lebanon.
Earlier in the day, a medical worker from AUBMC was walking around town in his scrubs even though he was not going to or from work. He says: “I wear them all the time now, just so I can run to the hospital again.”
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