- 'Difficult day': Oct 7 commemorations begin with festival memorial
- Commemorations begin for anniversary of attack on Israel
- Lewandowski hat-trick powers Liga leaders Barca to Alaves victory
- 'Nothing gets in way of team,' says Celtics' MVP hopeful Tatum
- India maintain Pakistan stranglehold as Windies cruise at Women's T20 World Cup
- 'We will win!': Mozambique's ruling party confident at final vote rally
- Tunisia voting ends as Saied eyes re-election with critics behind bars
- Florida braces for Milton, FEMA head slams 'dangerous' Helene misinformation
- Postecoglou slams 'unacceptable' Spurs after 'terrible' loss at Brighton
- Marmoush double denies Bayern outright Bundesliga top spot
- Rallies worldwide call for Gaza, Lebanon ceasefire
- Maresca hails Chelsea's 'fighting' spirit after draw with 10-man Forest
- New 'Joker' film, a dark musical, tops N.America box office
- Man Utd stalemate keeps Ten Hag in danger, Spurs rocked by Brighton
- Drowned by hurricane, remote N.Carolina towns now struggle for water
- Vikings hold off Jets in London to stay unbeaten
- Ahead of attack anniversary, Netanyahu says: 'We will win'
- West Indies cruise to T20 World Cup win over Scotland
- Arshdeep, Chakravarthy help India hammer Bangladesh in T20 opener
- Lewandowski's quickfire hat-trick powers Liga leaders Barca to Alaves victory
- Man Utd fire another blank in Aston Villa stalemate
- Lewandowski treble powers Liga leaders Barca to Alaves victory
- Russian activist killed on front line in Ukraine
- Openda strike briefly sends Leipzig top of Bundesliga
- Goal-shy Man Utd have to 'step up', says Ten Hag
- India bowl out Bangladesh for 127 in T20 opener
- Madueke rescues Chelsea in draw with 10-man Forest
- Beckett's belief rewarded as Bluestocking storms to Arc glory
- Trump on the stump, Harris hits airwaves in razor-edge US election
- Flash flooding kills three in northern Thailand
- Kaur leads India to victory over Pakistan in Women's T20 World Cup
- Juventus held by Cagliari after late penalty drama
- In France's Marseille, teen 'stabbed 50 times' then burned alive
- Ruthless Gauff beats Muchova in straight sets to win China Open
- India restrict Pakistan to 105-8 in Women's T20 World Cup
- England target repeat of Pakistan Test whitewash
- Penrith Panthers win fourth straight NRL title after downing Storm
- Weary Sinner happy for day off after battling into Shanghai last 16
- Pakistan's Masood warns England still a force without Stokes
- Madrid's Carvajal to miss several months after serious knee injury
- Israel pounds Lebanon ahead of Hamas attack anniversary
- Two elephants die in flash flooding in northern Thailand
- Sabalenka targets world number one and Wuhan hat-trick
- Toddler among 4 dead in migrant Channel crossings
- Tunisia votes with Saied set for re-election
- Bagnaia sets 'example' with Japan MotoGP win to cut gap on Martin
- Intense Israeli bombing rocks Beirut ahead of war anniversary
- Mozambique vote: no suspense but some disillusion
- Austrian rapper channels anti-racist rage in Romani hip-hop songs
- Ohtani magic powers Dodgers over Padres in MLB playoff thriller
Three dead, 100 wounded in new wave of Lebanon device explosions
A second wave of device explosions killed three people and wounded more than 100 in Hezbollah strongholds of Lebanon on Wednesday, officials said, stoking fears of an all-out war in the region.
A source close to Hezbollah said walkie-talkies used by its members blew up in its Beirut stronghold, with state media reporting similar blasts in south and east Lebanon.
Three people were killed and more than 100 wounded in the latest attacks, the Lebanese authorities said, with the health ministry also describing the devices targeted as walkie-talkies.
It came a day after the simultaneous explosion of hundreds of paging devices used by Hezbollah killed 12 people, including two children, and wounded up to 2,800 others across Lebanon, in an unprecedented attack blamed on Israel.
There was no comment from Israel, which only hours before Tuesday's attacks had announced it was broadening the aims its war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip to include its fight against the Palestinian group's ally Hezbollah.
Hezbollah said Israel was "fully responsible for this criminal aggression" and reiterated it would avenge the attack, while vowing to continue its fight against Israel in support of Hamas in the Gaza war.
Cross-border exchanges with Israeli forces were "ongoing and separate from the difficult reckoning that the criminal enemy must await for its massacre," Hezbollah said.
Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib warned the "blatant assault on Lebanon's sovereignty and security" was a dangerous development that could "signal a wider war".
At a Beirut hospital, doctor Joelle Khadra said "the injuries were mainly to the eyes and hands, with finger amputations, shrapnel in the eyes -- some people lost their sight."
A doctor at another Beirut hospital, requesting anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to the media, said he had worked through the night and that the injuries were "out of this world -- never seen anything like it".
- Heavy blow -
Experts said Israeli operatives had likely planted explosives on the paging devices before they were delivered to Hezbollah.
"This was more than lithium batteries being forced into override," said Charles Lister of the Middle East Institute.
"A small plastic explosive was almost certainly concealed alongside the battery, for remote detonation via a call or page," the analyst said, adding Israel's spy agency "Mossad infiltrated the supply chain".
Among the dead was the 10-year-old daughter of a Hezbollah member, killed in east Lebanon's Bekaa Valley when her father's pager exploded, the family and a source close to the group said.
Tehran's ambassador in Beirut, Mojataba Amani, who was injured, said on social media platform X that it was "a source of pride for me that my blood was mixed with that of the wounded Lebanese" in what he called a "horrific terrorist crime".
Iran's President Masoud Pezeshkian condemned the attack, decrying Western support for Israeli "crimes, killings and indiscriminate assassinations".
The attack dealt a heavy blow to the militant group, which already had concerns about the security of its communications after losing several key commanders to targeted air strikes in recent months.
A source close to Hezbollah, asking not to be identified, told AFP the pagers were "recently imported" and appeared to have been "sabotaged at source".
After The New York Times reported the pagers had been ordered from Taiwanese manufacturer Gold Apollo, the company said they had been produced by its Hungarian partner BAC Consulting KFT.
A government spokesman in Budapest said the company was "a trading intermediary, with no manufacturing or operational site in Hungary".
As fears again surged of a regional conflagration nearly a year into the Gaza war, Lufthansa and Air France announced the suspension of flights to Tel Aviv, Tehran and Beirut until Thursday.
- 'Extremely volatile' -
Since October, the unabating exchanges of fire between Israeli troops and Hezbollah have killed hundreds of mostly fighters in Lebanon, and dozens including soldiers on the Israeli side.
They have also forced tens of thousands of people on both sides of the border to flee their homes.
UN rights chief Volker Turk said Tuesday's attack had come at an "extremely volatile time", calling the blasts "shocking" and their impact on civilians "unacceptable".
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called on governments "not to weaponise civilian objects".
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was in Cairo on Wednesday to try to salvage ceasefire talks for the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.
"We all know that a ceasefire is the best chance to tackle the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, to address risks to regional stability," he said, while denying reports the United States had any prior knowledge of Tuesday's pager device attacks in Lebanon.
US officials have expressed increasing frustration with Israel, which has rejected American assessments that a deal is nearly complete and insisted on an Israeli military presence on the Egypt-Gaza border.
The October 7 attack that sparked the war resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians, on the Israeli side, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures which includes hostages killed in captivity.
Israel's retaliatory military offensive has killed at least 41,272 people in Gaza, the majority of them civilians, according to data provided by the Hamas-run territory's health ministry. The UN has acknowledged these figures as reliable.
In Gaza on Wednesday, the civil defence agency said an Israeli air strike on a school-turned-shelter killed five people, while the Israeli military said it targeted Hamas militants.
burs-ami/dv
P.Costa--AMWN