BEIRUT: Hundreds of pagers used by Hezbollah members exploded across Lebanon Tuesday, killing at least eight people and wounding Tehran’s ambassador in Beirut in blasts the Iran-backed militant group blamed on the Zionist entity. Pagers also exploded in Syria, killing at least seven people. Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah was not harmed in the spree of pager blasts, a senior Hezbollah source told Reuters on Tuesday.

There was no immediate comment from the Zionist military on the blasts, which came just hours after the Zionist entity announced it was broadening the aims of the war in Gaza to include its fight against Hezbollah along its border with Lebanon. Among the dead were the son of a Hezbollah lawmaker and the 10-year-old daughter of a member of the group. The girl was killed when her father’s pager exploded as she was standing beside him, her family and a source close to Hezbollah said.

Hezbollah blamed the Zionist entity for the blasts and warned it would be punished. “We hold the (Zionist) enemy fully responsible for this criminal aggression,” the group said in a statement, adding that the Zionist entity “will certainly receive its just punishment for this sinful aggression”. Health Minister Firass Abiad said 2,750 people had been injured by exploding pagers — “more than 200 of them critically”.

Iranian state television reported that Tehran’s ambassador in Beirut Mojtaba Amani suffered “superficial” injuries in one of the explosions. The afternoon blasts hit several Hezbollah strongholds across Lebanon, in

the first such incident since the group began trading near-daily fire with the Zionist entity in support of ally Hamas.

“Hundreds of Hezbollah members were injured by the simultaneous explosion of their pagers” in the group’s strongholds in Beirut’s southern suburbs, in south Lebanon and in the eastern Bekaa Valley, a Hezbollah source said, requesting anonymity. AFP journalists saw dozens of wounded being rushed to hospital in Beirut and in the south, where dozens of ambulances rushed between the cities of Tyre and Sidon in both directions.

Regional broadcasters carried CCTV footage which showed what appeared to be a small handheld device placed next to a grocery store cashier where an individual was paying spontaneously exploding. In other footage, an explosion appeared to knock out someone standing at a fruit stand at a market area.

Earlier on Tuesday, the Zionist entity’s domestic security agency said it had foiled a plot by Hezbollah to assassinate a former senior defense official in the coming days. The Shin Bet agency, which did not name the official, said in a statement it had seized an explosive device attached to a remote detonation system, using a mobile phone and a camera that Hezbollah had planned to operate from Lebanon. Shin Bet said the attempted attack was similar to a Hezbollah plot foiled in Tel Aviv a year ago, without giving further details.

Earlier Tuesday, the Zionist entity announced it was broadening the aims of the war sparked by the Hamas attacks to include its fight against Hezbollah along its border with Lebanon. To date, the Zionist entity’s objectives have been to crush Hamas and bring home the captives seized by Palestinian fighters during the Oct 7 attacks.

“The political-security cabinet updated the goals of the war this evening, so that they include the following section: the safe return of the residents of the north to their homes,” Zionist Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said in a statement. Since October, the unabating exchanges of fire between Zionist troops and Hamas ally Hezbollah in Lebanon have forced tens of thousands of people on both sides of the border to flee their homes

Not formally declared as a war, the exchanges of fire between Zionists troops and Hezbollah have killed hundreds in Lebanon and dozens on the Zionist side. Hezbollah had instructed its members to avoid mobile phones after the Gaza war began and to rely instead on its own telecommunications system to prevent Zionist breaches. The pagers that detonated were the latest model brought in by Hezbollah in recent months, three security sources said.

Hezbollah, which like Hamas is backed by the Zionist entity’s regional arch-foe Iran, claimed a dozen attacks on Zionist positions on Monday and three more on Tuesday. Before the wave of pager explosions, the Zionist entity said it had killed three Hezbollah members in a strike on Lebanon.

Hamas, meanwhile, said it was readying for more war, with assistance from fighters and support from across the region. The Zionist military offensive has killed at least 41,252 people in Gaza, mostly women and children. On Tuesday, UN member states were to debate a draft resolution demanding an end to the Zionist occupation of all Palestinian territories within 12 months. In Gaza, rescuers said several Zionist air strikes killed at least seven people overnight. – Agencies