Iran Air urged passengers not to take pagers on flights to Beirut

Iran Air has urged passengers on flights between Tehran and the Lebanese capital Beirut not to take pagers and walkie-talkies on board. This was reported on Saturday, September 21, by TV channel Press TV.

The company made the announcement shortly after Lebanese aviation authorities announced a ban on bringing pagers and walkie-talkies on board flights from Beirut airport until further notice.

It was also prohibited to carry such devices by air.

Earlier on September 17, multiple fighters of the Shiite Hezbollah movement were seriously injured in pager blasts in Beirut and southern Lebanon. The next day, various wireless devices exploded in cars and on motorcycles. These were portable radios, which were different from pagers. Lebanese authorities and Hezbollah officials blamed Israel for the bombings.

The next day, September 18, the French newspaper Le Figaro wrote that the Taiwanese company Gold Apollo said that the pagers, which were sold to members of the Shiite movement Hezbollah and exploded in Lebanon, were allegedly manufactured and sold by its Hungarian partner BAC.

During a UN Security Council meeting on September 20, Russia's permanent representative to the organization, Vasily Nebenzya, said the organizers of the explosions in Lebanon wanted to provoke a new war. According to him, those behind this crime cannot but realize that such attempts to draw Lebanon into a regional confrontation are inflaming the already turbulent atmosphere in the region.

The situation in the Middle East escalated on the morning of October 7, 2023, when the Palestinian radical movement Hamas launched a massive barrage of rockets into Israel from the Gaza Strip, invaded border areas in the south and took hostages. On the same day, Israel began retaliatory strikes.