LEILA FADEL, HOST:
The scenes across Lebanon were like something out of a "James Bond" movie.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Yesterday, pagers exploded across the country. These are old-style communication devices, often used today by hospital staff or groups that want secure communications, which apparently included the armed group Hezbollah. Many of its members were carrying these pagers in bags or on their hips or in their hands when they detonated yesterday. Videos showed explosions in grocery stores, at desks and in crowded streets. NPR's producer in Beirut, Jawad Rizkallah, reported from a hospital shortly after the blasts.
JAWAD RIZKALLAH, BYLINE: Ambulances keep coming, and no filming is allowed. Their army is here. It's a scene of chaos.
INSKEEP: The attack killed at least nine people, including two children, and wounded thousands more. A U.S. official tells NPR that Israel has acknowledged to the United States that it was responsible.
FADEL: NPR's Daniel Estrin is following these developments from Tel Aviv and joins us now. Hi, Daniel.
DANIEL ESTRIN, BYLINE: Hey, Leila.
FADEL: So walk us through the details of what we know about what happened in Lebanon.
ESTRIN: This took place at 3:30 in the afternoon on Tuesday. Pagers exploded across Beirut in south Lebanon, and they also went off in Syria, according to a Syrian monitoring group. Hezbollah says that these were handheld pagers used by its operatives. The son of a Hezbollah parliament member was killed. The Iranian ambassador to Lebanon was wounded. And Lebanon's health minister said that the majority of the injuries were to the face and to the eyes. And that might be because people were holding up these pagers to read a text message. According to The New York Times, a text message came in appearing to be from the Hezbollah leadership, and then the blasts followed.
FADEL: Yeah, I watched some of these videos, where people were buying groceries and then suddenly an explosion. And as we mentioned, Israel admitted to the U.S. that it was behind this mass attack. How did Israel carry this out?
ESTRIN: Well, first of all, the pagers. Hezbollah started using pagers at the beginning of this year because it was worried that Israel had infiltrated their smartphones. That's what a Jordanian security expert told me, Amer Al Sabaileh. He follows Hezbollah, and he said that the group distributed these pagers across the organization this year. And The New York Times reports that Israel booby-trapped the pagers before they were brought into Lebanon, and that the pager brand is apparently associated with a company in Taiwan.
Now, NPR's Emily Feng is in Taiwan. She visited that company this morning, and the owner told her that the pagers were their brand, yes, but that they were manufactured by another company based in Budapest, and all that he knew was that one of the company's local directors was named Teresa (ph). So still a lot we don't know yet.
FADEL: Very mysterious. And Hezbollah has warned that there will be consequences. Are there any signs you see that at this point could lead to an all-out regional war? I feel like we talk about this all the time, Daniel. But at this point, what do you think?
ESTRIN: We are fearful of a regional war. And that fear, I think we are much closer to that today than we have been before. We've been speaking with security experts in the region who think it will take time for Hezbollah to respond. Its communication system has been hijacked. They are suspicious. There might be a mole in their midst collaborating with Israel. So it's a big psychological blow. Hezbollah will need time to rebuild.
I think the question is, will Israel be the one to initiate a further attack on a weakened Hezbollah? Israel has been saying that military action is needed to stop Hezbollah's attacks on Israel. And the Biden administration's been trying to prevent a regional war. But based on NPR's reporting, the administration finds this attack very unhelpful.
FADEL: NPR's Daniel Estrin in Tel Aviv. Thank you, Daniel.
ESTRIN: You're welcome. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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