BEIRUT: The leader of Hezbollah acknowledged on Thursday that his group had suffered a “major and unprecedented” blow after thousands of operatives’ communication devices exploded across Lebanon in deadly attacks it blamed on the Zionist entity. In his first speech since the attacks, which killed 37 people and wounded nearly 3,000 more across two days, Hassan Nasrallah also struck a defiant tone, vowing that the Zionist entity would face a “just punishment”.

Even as he delivered his televised address, Zionist warplanes broke the sound barrier over Beirut. Describing the attacks as a possible “act of war”, he said the Zionist entity would face “tough retribution and just punishment, where it expects it and where it does not”. The attacks “crossed all red lines”, he said. The attacks were a “massacre” that “could be a war crime or a declaration of war”, he added, accusing the Zionist entity of having wanted to “kill no less than 5,000 people in two minutes”.

The Zionist entity has not commented on the attacks in which Hezbollah operatives’ pagers and walkie-talkies exploded in supermarkets, on streets and at funerals, plunging the country into panic. But its defense minister, Yoav Gallant, said on Wednesday, in reference to the Zionist entity’s border with Lebanon: “The center of gravity is moving northward.” “We are at the start of a new phase in the war,” he warned.

Hezbollah is an ally of Palestinian group Hamas, which has been fighting a war in Gaza since its Oct 7 attack on the Zionist entity. For nearly a year, the focus of the Zionist entity’s firepower has been on Gaza, which is ruled by Hamas. But its troops have also been engaged in near-daily clashes with Hezbollah fighters along its northern border, killing hundreds in Lebanon and

dozens in the Zionist entity. The exchanges of fire have forced tens of thousands of people on both sides of the border to flee their homes.

Nasrallah vowed to keep up Hezbollah’s fight against the Zionist entity until a ceasefire in Gaza is reached. “The Lebanese front will not stop until the aggression on Gaza stops” despite “all this blood spilt”, he said. Nasrallah addressed Zionist officials’ promises to return to their homes thousands of displaced Zionists. “You will not be able to return the people of the north to the north,” he said, warning that “no military escalation, no killings, no assassinations and no all-out war can return residents to the border”. The “only way” to return the displaced to the north is to “stop the war on Gaza,” he said.

Nasrallah said Hezbollah hoped Zionist troops would enter southern Lebanon because that would create a “historic opportunity” for the Iran-backed group. On Thursday, the Zionist military said it struck six Hezbollah “infrastructure sites” and a weapons storage facility overnight in southern Lebanon, a stronghold of the militant group. Lebanon’s official National News Agency also reported Zionist strikes and shelling on several towns in the south.

“Yes, we received a big and harsh blow, but this is also the nature of war,” Nasrallah said. “We know that our enemy has superiority on the technological level and we have never said otherwise.” Hezbollah said 25 of its members had been killed following the explosions, with a source close to the group saying at least 20 had died when their walkie-talkies detonated.

The Zionist entity will face “a crushing response from the axis of resistance”, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Commander Hossein Salami told Nasrallah on Thursday according to state media. Two Zionist soldiers were killed in combat on Thursday near the border with Lebanon, the Zionist military said. N12 News said one of them was killed by a drone and the other by an anti-tank missile fired by Hezbollah across the Lebanese border.

Lebanon’s Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib said the “blatant assault on Lebanon’s sovereignty and security” was a dangerous development that could “signal a wider war”. Its prime minister, Najib Mikati, urged the United Nations to oppose the Zionist entity’s “technological war” on the country, ahead of a UN Security Council meeting on the exploding devices attack. Iran’s envoy to the UN said his country “reserves the right to take retaliatory measures” after its ambassador in Beirut was wounded in the blasts.

The White House, which is pressing to salvage efforts for an elusive ceasefire deal to end the Gaza war, warned all sides against “an escalation of any kind”. “We don’t believe that the way to solve where we’re at in this crisis is by additional military operations at all,” said US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby.

The Zionist military offensive has killed at least 41,272 people in Gaza, most of them civilians. In Gaza on Wednesday, the civil defense agency said a Zionist strike on a school-turned-shelter killed five people.

In Lebanon, the influx of so many casualties following the blasts overwhelmed medics. “What happened in the last two days is so frightening. It’s terrifying,” Lina Ismail told AFP by phone from the eastern city of Baalbek where some of the explosions occurred. “We were so scared that we dismantled the inverter (a component inside solar energy systems) and turned off the device,” she said. “I took away my daughter’s power bank and we even sleep with our mobile phones in a separate room,” she added in a trembling voice.

Analysts said operatives had likely planted explosives on the pagers before they were delivered to Hezbollah. The preliminary findings of a Lebanese investigation found the pagers had been booby-trapped, a security official said. “Data indicates the devices were pre-programmed to detonate and contained explosive materials planted next to the battery,” the official said, requesting anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

A source close to Hezbollah, asking not to be identified, said the pagers were recently imported and appeared to have been “sabotaged at source”. The New York Times reported Wednesday that the pagers that exploded were produced by the Hungary-based BAC Consulting on behalf of Taiwanese manufacturer Gold Apollo. It cited intelligence officers as saying BAC was part of a Zionist front. A government spokesman in Budapest said the company was “a trading intermediary, with no manufacturing or operational site in Hungary”. Japanese firm Icom said it had stopped producing the model of radios reportedly used in Wednesday’s blasts in Lebanon around 10 years ago. – Agencies