BEIRUT—Pagers carried by hundreds of Hezbollah operatives unexpectedly exploded Tuesday, leaving many of them injured in an unprecedented event that struck across Lebanon.

The affected pagers were from a new shipment that the group received in recent days, people familiar with the matter said. A Hezbollah official said hundreds of fighters had such devices, speculating that malware may have caused the devices to heat up and explode. The official said some people felt the pagers heat up and disposed of them before they burst.

It couldn’t immediately be determined what caused the blasts, which were spread out across the country in several areas where Hezbollah has a heavy presence. The Israeli military didn’t immediately comment. The numbers of casualties were rising too quickly to count, a Hezbollah official said.

Lebanese Health Minister Firas Abiad said he needed more time to determine the total number of casualties but assessed that the number of emergency room admissions in southern Lebanon, a Hezbollah stronghold, was extremely high.

The incident comes amid growing tension along Lebanon’s border with Israel. Hezbollah began firing rockets into Israel soon after the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attacks on southern Israel that set off the war in Gaza, and the two have exchanged fire daily since then, driving tens of thousands of people out of towns on both sides of the border and leaving hundreds of Hezbollah operatives dead.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/hundreds-of-hezbollah-operatives-pagers-explode-in-apparent-attack-across-lebanon/ar-AA1qIumR