Hezbollah chief acknowledges 'unprecedented' blow after device blasts aimed at 5,000 members

Hassan Nasrallah vows Iran-backed group ready to face any Israeli incursion into south Lebanon

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Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah on Thursday acknowledged his group had suffered an "unprecedented" blow after the explosion of thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies in Lebanon, but still pledged to defeat any Israeli ground invasion.

The two waves of device detonations on Tuesday and Wednesday killed 37 people and maimed thousands of others. Most of those killed were members of Iran-backed Hezbollah,, which acknowledged the deaths in individual statements commemorating each one.

"There’s no doubt that we have been hit, security-wise, in an unprecedented way," Mr Nasrallah said in his first comments on the attacks that rocked Lebanon and filled hospitals with thousands of wounded. "This level of aggression might be unprecedented in our conflict with the Israeli enemy." The attacks "may even be seen as a declaration of war”.

Mr Nasrallah accused Israel of carrying out "terrorist attacks" by hitting at least "5,000 people in two minutes" with the detonations of wireless devices. The number of eye injuries "is high and hospitals are not equipped to handle such a high influx", he said.

He said an internal investigative committee had been formed to look into the details of the attacks from the production of the devices to the moment of detonation.

According to a security source in Beirut, the joint assessment of the Lebanese security agencies is that the devices were rigged “with a small amount of an unknown type of explosives, either at the storage place in Budapest or even in Israel”.

“The bigger probability is that they took them to Israel, rigged them with explosives, and then sent them back to the storage location before Hezbollah shipped them to Lebanon,” the source said.

The attacks came after Israel announced it was shifting its focus to the war with Hezbollah, which has forced tens of thousands of Israelis to abandon their homes in the north of the country.

The Israeli government stated it was determined to change the situation, while the heavily armed militant group declared it would not stop attacking Israel until there was a ceasefire in Gaza.

Despite the recent attacks on Hezbollah members that could disrupt the group's long-term communication, Mr Nasrallah said his heavily armed group was ready to face and defeat an Israeli invasion of south Lebanon.

Any "security belt" set up by Israel will be turned into "hell" and will only push more Israelis out of their homes in the country's north, he said.

As Mr Nasrallah spoke, low-flying Israeli jets released flares over Beirut and generated a massive sonic boom that shook the ground, sending residents into panic.

Hours after his speech Israel conducted dozens of intense, widespread air assaults across southern Lebanon, with the Israeli army saying it struck about 30 rocket launchers and Hezbollah sites.

The attack was preceded by Hezbollah launching a barrage of Falaq missiles into the northern Israeli town of Metula, causing fires and heavy damage to homes. A woman was lightly wounded, Israeli media reported.

Earlier in the day two Israeli soldiers were killed in Hezbollah attacks on Israeli military posts near the border, the military said. The first, in which eight other soldiers were injured, was caused by a barrage of anti-tank missiles. The second Israeli soldier's death was caused by an explosive-laden drone, Israeli media reported.