Hezbollah chief says group suffered ‘major’ blow in device blasts

BEIRUT: Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah acknowledged Thursday his powerful group had suffered an “unprecedented” blow when thousands of operatives’ communication devices exploded in attacks it blamed on Israel.

Israel has not commented on the attacks that killed 37 people and wounded nearly 3,000 across Lebanon over two days but has said it will widen the scope of its war in Gaza to include the Lebanon front.

Delivering a speech after the attacks on Tuesday and Wednesday, which plunged Lebanon into panic, Nasrallah struck a defiant tone and warned of retaliation.

Describing the attacks as a possible “act of war”, he said Israel would face “tough retribution and just punishment, where it expects it and where it does not”.

The attacks were a “massacre” that “could be a war crime or a declaration of war,” he said, accusing Israel of having wanted to “kill no less than 5,000 people in two minutes”.

Nasrallah also vowed to keep up Hezbollah’s fight against Israel 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 Israeli officials’ promises to return to their homes thousands of Israelis displaced by exchanges of fire across the border with Lebanon.

“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.

Hezbollah is an ally of Palestinian militant group Hamas, which on October 7 launched an unprecedented attack on Israel that sparked Gaza’s deadliest ever war.

Up until now, the focus of Israel’s firepower had been on Gaza. But Israel’s northern border with Lebanon has seen exchanges of fire between Israeli troops and Hezbollah militants almost every day since October 8.

The violence has killed hundreds of people, mostly fighters, on the Lebanese side, and dozens on the Israeli side.