Major reactions emerged on Wednesday in response to a deadly attack that saw hundreds of pagers used by Hezbollah simultaneously explode across Lebanon.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said that Western backers of Israel should feel “shame” after paging devices belonging to Lebanon’s Hezbollah exploded, in a deadly attack the Tehran-aligned group blamed on Israel.
“Western countries and the Americans… fully support the crimes, killings and indiscriminate assassinations of the Zionist regime,” Pezeshkian said in a statement, referring to Israel, adding that the explosions should bring them “shame.”
Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani said in a statement that he “condemned the terrorist act of the Zionist regime… as an example of mass murder.”
Among those wounded in the pager blasts on Tuesday was Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon Mojtaba Amani, with Iranian media reporting he suffered injuries “to the hand and the face.”
State television said that Amani was only lightly injured.
The Iranian Red Crescent said it had dispatched “rescue teams and eye surgeons” to Lebanon to treat the wounded.
The blasts came just hours after Israel announced it was broadening the aims of the war sparked by Hamas’ October 7 attacks to include its fight against the group’s ally Hezbollah along the country’s border with Lebanon.
In his statement, Kanani expressed solidarity with the families of those killed and wounded in the explosions, including the Iranian ambassador.
The European Union’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell condemned the explosions, saying that “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.”
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.”
Russia condemned the attack, saying the blasts risked igniting tensions in an already “explosive” region.
“What has happened, whatever it is, is certainly leading to an escalation of tensions,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
“The region itself is in an explosive situation… And every incident like this has the potential to be a trigger,” he added.
The Russian Foreign Ministry also denounced the attack in an earlier statement.
“We strongly condemn the unprecedented attack on friendly Lebanon and its citizens, which constitutes a flagrant violation of its sovereignty and a serious challenge to international law through the use of unconventional weapons,” spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.
“Against the backdrop of growing tension along the Lebanese-Israeli border, such irresponsible actions are fraught with extremely dangerous consequences, as they provoke a new round of escalation,” she said, calling for “all parties involved to exercise restraint.”
There was no immediate comment from Israel on the wave of explosions.
With AFP
