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Thousands gathered in Beirut‘s southern suburbs Wednesday to attend an outdoor funeral for two Hezbollah fighters, a paramedic and a child who had been killed in Tuesday’s pager attacks. Then chaos erupted: an explosion, the acrid smell of smoke, and the crushing stampede of panicked, screaming mourners.
When the blast went off, a brief, eerie stillness descended on the crowd.Mourners looked at one another in disbelief. The religious chants being broadcast over a loudspeaker abruptly stopped. Then panic set in. People started scrambling in the streets, hiding in the lobbies of nearby buildings, and shouting at one another, “Turn off your phone! Take out the battery!” Soon a voice on the loudspeaker at the funeral urged everyone to do the same. Everyone was afraid that their phone, or the phone of a person standing next to them in the crowd, would also soon explode.
One woman, Um Ibrahim, stopped a reporter in the middle of the confusion and begged to use the reporter’s cellphone to call her children. The woman dialed a number with her hands shaking, then screamed into the phone, “Turn off your phones now!” She said it over and over again. Then she pleaded with her children, “Stay where you are, don’t use the phone.”
The blasts on Wednesday came one day after pagers across Lebanon exploded simultaneously, killing at least 12 people and injuring thousands more across Lebanon.
Once again, wireless devices belonging to members of Hezbollah – including walkie-talkies – exploded, further rattling a country reeling from a new phase of technological warfare.
After the initial terror subsided at the funeral Wednesday, a group of women in the crowd began to pump their fists. They wanted Israel to know they would not be cowed. “These are Hezbollah,” said Hiyam Fakih, 65. “Do you think such explosions will scare these women?”
When the blast went off, a brief, eerie stillness descended on the crowd.Mourners looked at one another in disbelief. The religious chants being broadcast over a loudspeaker abruptly stopped. Then panic set in. People started scrambling in the streets, hiding in the lobbies of nearby buildings, and shouting at one another, “Turn off your phone! Take out the battery!” Soon a voice on the loudspeaker at the funeral urged everyone to do the same. Everyone was afraid that their phone, or the phone of a person standing next to them in the crowd, would also soon explode.
One woman, Um Ibrahim, stopped a reporter in the middle of the confusion and begged to use the reporter’s cellphone to call her children. The woman dialed a number with her hands shaking, then screamed into the phone, “Turn off your phones now!” She said it over and over again. Then she pleaded with her children, “Stay where you are, don’t use the phone.”
The blasts on Wednesday came one day after pagers across Lebanon exploded simultaneously, killing at least 12 people and injuring thousands more across Lebanon.
Once again, wireless devices belonging to members of Hezbollah – including walkie-talkies – exploded, further rattling a country reeling from a new phase of technological warfare.
After the initial terror subsided at the funeral Wednesday, a group of women in the crowd began to pump their fists. They wanted Israel to know they would not be cowed. “These are Hezbollah,” said Hiyam Fakih, 65. “Do you think such explosions will scare these women?”
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