Fears of total war between Hezbollah and Israel are spiking as two Israeli soldiers were killed in a missile and drone attack on northern Israel following deadly Israeli twin device explosion attacks in Lebanon.
The IDF named the slain soldiers as: Nael Fwarsy, 43, a logistics company commander in the 300th Baram Regional Brigade’s 299th Battalion and Tomer Keren, 20, of the Golani Brigade’s 51st Battalion.
Fwarsy was killed and another soldier was lightly wounded after an explosive-laden drone launched by Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah group struck an area outside Ya’ara in the Western Galilee.
Keren was killed and eight other soldiers were wounded, including one seriously, after two anti-tank missiles launched from Lebanon struck a position in the Ramim Ridge area on the border in the Galilee Panhandle.
Images from south Lebanon show that Israel has also launched attacks on the Arab country amid widespread panic that the Israeli war on Gaza will expand into Lebanon.
“Declaration of war”
Addressing the nation via televised speech, the leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, called the pager and walkie-talkie attacks “a terrorist act” and a “declaration of war” against the people of Lebanon.
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“The enemy has crossed all red lines and all laws in this attack. This is a massive terrorist attack, genocide, a massacre,” Nasrallah said Thursday in his first televised address since the pager attacks.
“The Tuesday and Wednesday massacres are a war crime, a declaration of war…you can call it anything,” he said, adding Israel will face “tough retribution and just punishment, where it expects it and where it does not.”
As the broadcast was aired, deafening sonic booms from Israeli warplanes shook Beirut overhead as the threat of all-out war steadily ramps up.
According to reports, Israel said its warplanes struck southern Lebanon overnight while Arab reports claim that airstrikes also resumed in the border area this afternoon.
Pager/walkie-talkie attack
In an unprecedented security breach, thousands of pagers and walkie-talkie radios belonging to members of Hezbollah detonated across Lebanon in simultaneous explosions on Tuesday and Wednesday.
According to reports, the attacks have killed at least 26 people and many wounding thousands more.
On Wednesday, a batch of 5,000 pager devices imported by Hezbollah five months ago was “almost certain” to have been rigged with explosives before arriving in Lebanon, a former Lebanese brigadier general said.
Nasrallah admitted that the pager blasts that have left 37 dead and 3,500 wounded was a “very big hit for us.”
“This was a big test for us, but we have managed, we will overcome this test with high spirits,” he said in his televised address .. This was a very big hit but we will not fail.. we will be stronger, more powerful.”
Nasrallah also said Israel’s intention was to kill 4,000 in one minute on Tuesday, and another thousand on Wednesday, claiming that “our enemy” had partly failed in this aim.
Not all of the targets hit by the twin attacks are Hezbollah members.
Lebanese social media users extensively shared the name and images of 10-year-old Fatima Jaafar Abdullah on Tuesday, making her the most notable victim of wireless pager explosions.
Fatima has been buried near her family’s home in the Bekaa region in eastern Lebanon.
Her cousin Muhammed Abbas Abdullah said during her funeral procession: “Fatima was studying and had intended to bring the pager device to her father when it unexpectedly exploded in her hands.”
