Lebanon’s deadly blasts ‘disgrace’ for West: Pezeshkian
Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian reacted to the Lebanon’s deadly blasts blamed on Israel, calling it a disgrace for the Western countries who spare no effort to achieve their “inhumane goals.”
Nine people were killed and over 300 wounded Wednesday when walkie-talkies exploded across Lebanon, the government said, a day after pagers used by Hezbollah resistance group blew up, killing 12 and wounding up to 2,800.
“The new wave of walkie-talkie explosions... killed nine people and wounded more than 300,” the health ministry said in a statement.
Simultaneous explosions of wireless telecommunication devices on Tuesday have killed a dozen people, including two children, and wounded some 3,000 others across Lebanon. Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon was also among the wounded. Several people were also wounded in neighboring Syria.
Hezbollah and the Lebanese government have accused Israel of responsibility for explosions. Israel has so far declined to comment on the gory incident. Hezbollah has vowed to punish Israel.
“The incident once again showed that although the Western countries and the Americans claim that they are looking for a cease-fire (in Gaza), in practice they fully support the crimes, killings and blind assassinations of the Zionist regime,” Pezeshkian said during a cabinet meeting on Wednesday.
Collapse of humanity
“Using devices, made for welfare of human beings, as a tool for assassination and annihilation” of those who do not hold the same views of the US, Israel and the West is “an indication of the collapse of humanity as well as domination of savagery and barbarism,” the website of the president quoted him as saying.
He called unity among Islamic countries as the best way to stop the crimes committed by the Israeli regime and its supporters against the oppressed people of Palestine and the Muslim world.
Israel has claimed the lives of more than 41,000 Palestinians in Gaza since October 7, 2023 when Hamas-led Palestinian resistance groups launched an operation on Israel’s positions inside the occupied territories.
Since then, Hezbollah has exchanged fire with the Israeli military on a daily basis to support the Palestinian fighters in Gaza. More than 600 people in Lebanon have been killed since the start of the clashes last October.
The explosions on Tuesday also drew reactions from many other countries and international bodies.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Wednesday warned against the risk of escalation in the Middle East after the detonation of pagers.
Blinken said the United States was still gathering facts but it was in no one’s interest for the conflict to spread.
‘Hybrid war against
Lebanon’
Russia’s Foreign Ministry said the attack was an act of hybrid war against Lebanon in which it said thousands of innocent people had been hurt.
“It appears that the organizers of this high-tech attack deliberately sought to foment a large-scale armed confrontation in order to provoke a major war in the Middle East,” Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, said in a statement.
The European Union’s foreign policy chief on Wednesday condemned the explosions of pagers, saying, “Even if the attacks seem to have been targeted, they had heavy, indiscriminate collateral damages among civilians, including children among the victims.”
“I consider this situation extremely worrying. I can only condemn these attacks that endanger the security and stability of Lebanon, and increase the risk of escalation in the region,” Josep Borrell said.
Borrell added that the “European Union calls on all stakeholders to avert an all-out war, which would have heavy consequences for the entire region and beyond.”
The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk in a statement described the blasts as “shocking,” and said their impact on civilians was “unacceptable.”
Those responsible for the deadly explosions “must be held to account,” the UN rights chief said.