NYT: In Lebanon, the sound of pagers before the explosion prompted people to put them to their faces
Lebanon’s hospitals are overwhelmed with hundreds of people with eye and facial injuries after the pager blasts, so many that the country is short of eye surgeons, a member of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) explained to The New York Times.
The Islamic movement Hezbollah has used pagers for years to make it difficult to intercept messages. On the day of the incident, a message was received on the device that, according to two officials familiar with the situation, sounded like it was coming from Hezbollah leadership. The pagers beeped for several seconds before exploding. The sounds caused some of the victims to hold the devices close to their eyes and faces to check the message, causing injuries. Lebanon’s Health Minister Dr. Firass Abiad also said that many of the victims had injuries to their faces, especially their eyes, as well as their arms and abdomen. At least 11 people were killed when the pagers detonated, injuring at least 2,700 people.
Doctors unable to cope with influx of victims, Iranian ambassador injured
Among those injured was Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon, Mojtaba Amini. As a result of the detonation, the US said, the diplomat lost one eye and seriously damaged the other. At the same time, Iran hastened to deny this information. The diplomatic mission statedthat Ambassador Amani’s treatment process is going well and that the reports about his physical condition and blindness are lies.
A doctor who visited the hospitals in Sidon where some of the wounded were taken, saidthat because so many people have suffered eye injuries, there is a shortage of eye surgeons. Doctor Abdulrahman al-Bizri said hospitals he visited were overwhelmed with people with injuries to their eyes, faces and hands, and that medical staff were struggling to treat them. “The eye injuries will be severe and will require long-term treatment,” he said. The wounded are being sent to medical facilities outside Beirut and its southern suburbs, where hospitals are overwhelmed.
Iran has sent doctors to Lebanon. The head of the Iranian Red Crescent Society, Pir Hossein Kolivand, said that the authorities are ready to transport the wounded to the Islamic Republic for treatment.
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The Russian Foreign Ministry responded to the incident
The official representative of the Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, stated that the detonation of the devices requires an investigation by competent specialists. “This [инцидент] “This requires an investigation and requires international attention to this issue,” she noted.
According to the NYT, the pager operation was organized by Israel. According to American officials, Israel hid the explosive in a batch of Taiwanese-made pagers imported to Lebanon. Hezbollah bought 3,000 pagers from Gold Apollo in Taiwan, but they were damaged before they reached the customer.
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