Photo Credit: REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir

Hand-held radios used by Hezbollah exploded on Wednesday across southern Lebanon and Beirut suburbs, further escalating tensions with Israel. This comes a day after similar explosions, triggered via the group’s pagers, rattled the region.

According to Lebanon’s Health Ministry, the initial casualty count includes one person killed and more than 100 injured. Earlier reports from the state news agency suggested three fatalities.

One of the blasts occurred near a funeral organized by the Iran-backed Hezbollah for members killed in the previous day’s pager explosions, which injured many of the group’s fighters across the country.

The Lebanese Red Cross confirmed on its X (formerly Twitter) account that 30 ambulance teams had been dispatched to multiple explosion sites to assist the injured.

In response to the chaos, Hezbollah launched rocket strikes on Israeli artillery positions on Wednesday. This marked the group’s first offensive against Israel since the pager-triggered blasts, which have raised fears of a broader Middle East conflict.