Russia: Pager blasts against Hezbollah meant to ‘provoke major war’
Russia says the attack against Lebanon’s resistance movement Hezbollah through pager blasts was intentionally designed to “provoke a major war in the Middle East”, after simultaneous explosions of thousands of pagers across the Arab country killed a dozen people and wounded thousands others.
Russia’s foreign ministry made the comment in a statement on Wednesday, just a after explosives planted in the AR-924 pagers went off across various locations throughout Lebanon, killing at least 12 people and wounding nearly 3,000 others.
The casualties include members of the resistance movement as well as civilians.
“We regard what happened as yet another act of hybrid warfare against Lebanon, which has harmed thousands of innocent people. 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,” said Maria Zakharova, spokeswoman for Russia’s Foreign Ministry.
Earlier in the day, the pager manufacturer, Taiwan’s Gold Apollo, stated that the exploding pagers were actually produced in Hungary.
Beirut and Hezbollah have held the Israeli regime squarely responsible for the deadly aggression, with the latter warning the regime about “severe reckoning” for the atrocity.
Tel Aviv has declined to comment on the attack.
According to Lebanon’s Health Minister Firas Abiad, many of the wounded had received severe injuries to the eyes and others had limbs amputated.
Israeli media reports said the Israeli regime contacted Washington before the terrorist attack and said that Israel was going to carry out “an operation” in Lebanon soon.
Separately on Wednesday, Moscow announced that Russian experts would examine the incident’s causes to “eliminate such risks in our country.”
“An absolutely thorough investigation of this incident must be carried out. The causes of the incident, the circumstances must be established,” said Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov at a press briefing.
“After that, of course, this should become the subject of study by specialists in order to take measures to eliminate such risks in our country and in other places,” he further noted.
Hezbollah has been staging hundreds of strikes against the occupying entity both in support of the war-hit Gazans and in retaliation for intensified Israeli attacks that have been targeting the Lebanese soil since the launch of the war on the Palestinian territory on October last year.
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