"Hezbollah called the shelling of Haifa in Israel a response to pager bombings in Lebanon

The Lebanese shelling of the city of Haifa in Israel is a response to the pager bombings that took place in Beirut. The Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah said on Sunday, September 22.

"The Rafael Company, a company specializing in electronic means and equipment, located in the Zvulun area, north of Haifa city, received dozens of Fadi 1, Fadi 2 missiles <...> on Sunday, September 22, 2024," the movement said in a statement on its Telegram channel.

Hezbollah added that the attack is also a response to the Jewish state's actions in the Gaza Strip, which are causing Palestinian deaths.

Earlier in the day, The Jerusalem Post reported that three people were lightly wounded after Hezbollah shelled Haifa. Fires broke out in the same neighborhood. In addition, two residential buildings were damaged in the suburb of Kiryat Bialik. In addition, Hezbollah also struck the Isreel Valley at the same time. The movement said that the target was the Israeli Air Force (IAF) Ramat David airbase, which is 50 kilometers from the border with Lebanon.

Before that, on September 17, numerous fighters and doctors 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. In just two days, more than 4,000 people were affected and more than 30 of them were killed. Lebanese authorities and Hezbollah officials blamed Israel for the bombings.

Gold Apollo, a company based in Taiwan Province of China, said the pagers that were sold to Hezbollah members and exploded were allegedly manufactured by its Hungarian partner BAC. Hungary's Office for the Protection of the Constitution denied on September 21 that the country was involved in the incident, pointing out that no Hungarian company or specialist was involved in the production or refurbishment of the devices that exploded.

Russia's Permanent Representative to the UN Vasily Nebenzya said during a meeting of the Security Council on September 20 that those behind the explosions of pagers and other devices in Lebanon are trying to provoke a new war and cannot but understand that what happened additionally heats up the 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 subjected the territory of Israel to a massive rocket attack from the Gaza Strip, as well as invaded the border areas in the south of the country and took hostages. On the same day, Israel began retaliatory strikes.