Israeli jets disrupt Hezbollah leader’s speech as he vows revenge for blasts

Israeli jets bombarded southern Lebanon and staged a show of force over Beirut just as Hezbollah’s leader vowed to avenge the covert operation that turned his fighters into walking booby traps.

Hassan Nasrallah admitted that his movement had been dealt “a huge and severe blow” after two days of remote-controlled explosions in electronic devices killed 37 people and wounded thousands more.

Speaking for the first time since the attacks began on Tuesday, Nasrallah used a televised speech to castigate Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, accusing him of carrying out an “act of war”.

However, if Hezbollah’s supporters were hoping its leader would order full-scale retaliation by unleashing the movement’s vast rocket arsenal against their hated neighbour, they were to be disappointed.

Wary of being drawn into open conflict, Nasrallah instead threatened to respond only in the vaguest terms, promising a “moment of reckoning” at an unspecified time in the future.

“The enemy crossed all boundaries and red lines,” he said. “It will be met with a harsh punishment in ways they might expect and not expect. You will know when it happens – but its nature, its size, how and when it will happen, this we will keep to ourselves.”

As he spoke, Israel delivered a pointed message of its own as its fighter jets broke the sound barrier over Beirut, the Lebanese capital, triggering sonic booms that further unnerved its edgy residents.

Israeli forces also launched air and artillery strikes against Hezbollah positions in southern Lebanon, while two Israeli soldiers were killed on its northern border.

Nasrallah sought to play down the attacks, which Israel has not yet officially acknowledged, as much as possible.

He claimed that Israel had aimed to kill 5,000 people by detonating explosives hidden in the pagers and walkie-talkie radios of his fighters. But it failed, he said, because the operation only killed a fraction of that number.

Nasrallah also sought to shrug off the impact of the attack, claiming that the movement’s communications networks had survived largely unscathed.

In Hezbollah’s strongholds in the poor suburbs of south Beirut, the scene of hundreds of small explosions this week, the group’s members and supporters tried to project similar bravado.

Yet quietly many admitted to shredded nerves and a sense that every piece of technology was now a source of suspicion and that every passerby on the street was potentially a walking bomb ready to explode.

“Yesterday I bought an alarm clock because I didn’t want to sleep near my phone,” said a woman who only identified herself as Sara. “Although I have to have it with me for work, I feel like I am carrying a bomb in my pocket. I keep touching it to make sure it is not heating up.”

She was not alone. Neighbours and friends had been disconnecting appliances, refusing to answer calls and even disposing of baby monitors for fear of what might be targeted next.

The paranoia was hardly surprising. Few in south Beirut did not feel the impact of Tuesday’s pager blasts and Wednesday’s walkie-talkie explosions.

“My friend died and seven other people I know were wounded,” said Sara, opening up her mobile phone to reveal a photograph of a man she knew who had lost a hand and been blinded in both eyes.

Nearly 3,000 people were wounded, many of them in south Beirut. Sara described the two hospitals she went to volunteer at on the first day of the attacks as “scenes of horror.”

“It felt like being in a zombie movie,” she said. “There was blood all over the floor and people were coming in without fingers or hands. Everywhere there were people looking for their relatives. It was chaos.”

Nearby, in a grim irony, funerals were taking place to lay to rest those killed in burial processions that had taken place the previous day.

Hezbollah fighters in camouflage uniforms and red berets formed a guard of honour around the coffins of Fadel Abbas Bazzi and Ahmad Ali Hassan, both of whom had died in the second wave of attacks that targeted Hezbollah’s hand-held radios.

A brass band played and young Boy Scouts in Hezbollah scarves stood to attention near the funeral biers as mourners gathered in notably fewer numbers than the previous day – another glimpse into the fear that has taken hold of much of Beirut.

Among those in attendance was a Hezbollah member who, despite suffering a wound to his side when his pager exploded, had brought his seven-year-old son to teach him that he would one day follow in his father’s footsteps.

“My son needs to be here whatever the risk,” he said. “I am teaching him a lesson. We could all die soon and if we do, the next generation need to understand what we are fighting for. Their turn will come.”

Such words are a sign that many Hezbollah fighters see their conflict with Israel in terms of decades rather than years.

“Hezbollah has 100,000 fighters,” said one of the movement’s supporters. “In the past two days maybe 5,000 of them were injured. But we still have 95,000 more who are unhurt and ready to fight with all their heart and souls. We cannot be defeated.”

While Israel revels in the unalloyed triumph of the past few days, it will take more than even this most extraordinary of attacks to defeat Hezbollah, which has been firing rockets into northern Israel in a limited show of support of Hamas since the start of Israeli operations in Gaza last October.

The group is estimated to have fired a total of 8,000 rockets from its estimated arsenal of 200,000.

In his speech, Nasrallah warned Mr Netanyahu that not only would he not win but that he would fail even in his most pressing goal: finding a way to allow more than 60,000 Israelis living within range of Hezbollah’s rockets to return home.

“Let me tell the Israeli government, the Israeli army and the Israeli people: You will not manage,” he said. “I tell prime minister Netanyahu: You can do what you want, you will not manage.

“The only solution is to halt the aggression against the people of Gaza. No military escalation, no killings, no total war will return your settlers to the border area. You know it.”

Although the terms of a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas have been outlined for months, both sides have refused to compromise on its final details.

In a sign of a potential breakthrough, however, Israel has reportedly drawn up a new proposal to break the deadlock that would allow Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader, along with thousands of Hamas members, to leave Gaza for a third country in exchange for the release of all 101 Israeli hostages.

Gal Hirsch, Israel’s coordinator for the hostages, reportedly met with his American counterparts in the White House last week to present the “safe passage deal”, as the proposal is called, according to Israel’s KAN public broadcaster.

Meanwhile, Lloyd Austin, the US defence secretary, postponed a trip to Israel scheduled for next week, the news site Axios reported, citing two Israeli officials.

Mr Austin had been due to hold talks with his Israeli counterpart Yoav Gallant as well as with Mr Netanyahu.

The postponement came as David Lammy, the Foreign Secretary, repeated calls for British nationals to leave Lebanon.