Our Planet Climate and Geopolitics
Nearly 3,000 people were injured and eight killed including a child in Lebanon yesterday, after low-tech pagers used by Hezbollah members to dodge Israeli surveillance detonated across the country. Iran’s ambassador to Beirut was among the injured. Suspicion immediately turned to Israel: two Israeli ex-officials told the FT the pagers could have been hacked, forcing the battery to overheat and explode, or a shipment of pagers could have been intercepted and tiny explosives inserted. Iran-backed Hezbollah said Israel would receive “just punishment” for what one official described as the group’s “biggest security breach” after almost a year of increasingly tense border strikes. Israel’s military didn’t comment, but earlier on Tuesday Israel added the return of its citizens to their homes near the Lebanese border to its list of formal war objectives.
