Hezbollah said on Wednesday it attacked Israeli artillery positions with rockets in the first strike since pager blasts wounded thousands of its members in Lebanon and raised the prospect of a wider Middle East war, APA reports citing Reuters.
Israel's spy agency Mossad, which has a long history of sophisticated operations on foreign soil, planted explosives inside pagers imported by Hezbollah months before Tuesday's detonations, a senior Lebanese security source and another source told Reuters.
The death toll rose to 12, including two children, Lebanese Health Minister Firass Abiad said on Wednesday. Tuesday's attack wounded nearly 3,000 people, including many of the militant group's fighters and Iran's envoy to Beirut.
A Taiwanese pager maker denied that it had produced the pager devices which exploded in an audacious attack that raised the prospect of a full-scale war between Hezbollah and Israel.
Gold Apollo said the devices were made by under licence by a company called BAC, based in Hungary's capital Budapest.
There was no immediate word on when Hezbollah had launched its latest rocket attack, but normally the group announces such strikes shortly after carrying them out, suggesting it fired at the Israeli artillery positions on Wednesday.
Hezbollah has vowed to retaliate against Israel, whose military declined to comment on the blasts. The two sides have been engaged in cross-border warfare since the Gaza conflict erupted last October, fuelling fears of a wider Middle East conflict that could drag in the United States and Iran.
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