The day after thousands of Hezbollah terror suspects were injured, and reportedly a dozen people killed, by their pagers almost simultaneously exploding, Lebanese and Iranian media reported a second wave of radio device detonations.
The second wave appears to involve two-way radio devices, such as walkie-talkies.
At least one of these explosions was reported near the funeral of a Hezbollah operative killed by the Tuesday pager explosions.
“We came out to try and find out what the sound was and people were running. People were covered in blood,” said Sky News correspondent Alex Crawford, who was in attendance at the funeral.
“There was blood on a car. One young man was running and he was very stressed. He said a walkie-talkie – which the Hezbollah security people around here are using for the funeral – exploded,” she said.
“The Hezbollah people then gathered up all the walkie-talkies and have been taking the batteries out of them. Our cameraman was surrounded by very tense and angry Hezbollah security, who told him to stop filming,” she reported.
Crawford said the funeral was “still going ahead” despite the explosions, but the crowd was “extremely tense,” and Hezbollah operatives were “furious.”
Hezbollah’s Al Manar TV news reported three new fatalities and dozens of injuries in the Bekaa region. The Lebanese health ministry reported more than a hundred injuries across southern Beirut and its suburbs. Most of the patients were treated for injuries in their hands or abdomen.
Lebanese Red Cross reported 30 of its ambulance teams are on “high alert” and responding to “multiple explosions in different areas.”
Lebanese state media also claimed some of the explosions were due not to radio devices, but home solar energy systems exploding.