Lebanese ministers warn of a dangerous next 48 hours after pager attacks

Lebanon’s leadership warned that the risk of further violence and escalation is extremely high following two days of attacks involving exploding communications devices across the country.

The next 48 hours, ministers told CNBC on Thursday, will be particularly dangerous.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, thousands of communications devices — including pagers and two-way radios — used by members of Iran-backed Lebanese militant group Hezbollah exploded in an apparent widespread act of sabotage, killing at least 37 people and injuring at least 3,000 more.

Hezbollah called the act an “Israeli aggression”; Israel, meanwhile, has not commented on the blasts. Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon, Mojtaba Amani, was among those injured, while a son of a Hezbollah member of Parliament was killed in the attack. Children were also among those killed.

“It’s definitely a very serious escalation. I don’t see any act of escalation that will not lead to provocation, and that is what we fear most, because what happened yesterday will only trigger more escalation into the conflict,” Lebanon’s minister of economy, Amin Salam, told CNBC’s Dan Murphy on Thursday.

“This will be a really, very, very dangerous … 48 hours that this country will witness to see how the reaction will be.”

Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that also dominates a large swathe of Lebanon’s politics, is already engaged in near-daily exchanges of fire with Israel to its south. The group has now vowed retaliation, raising fears of all-out war in a region already ravaged by conflict.

Hezbollah has launched thousands of rockets into Israel in the nearly 12 months since the latter began its war against Palestinian militant group Hamas in Gaza in October last year, with Israeli retaliatory fire killing hundreds of Hezbollah fighters and scores of Lebanese civilians. Tens of thousands of people on both the Lebanese and Israeli sides of the border have been evacuated from their homes.

The attacks, Salam said, managed to unify many Lebanese behind Hezbollah, despite many in the country normally being opposed to the group.

“It created a massive, massive reaction, even with people in Lebanon that were against Hezbollah, now they are taking a stand more with Hezbollah,” the minister said.

“So the provocation turned from one entity in Lebanon into the entire country. Yesterday, we witnessed an unparalleled kind of unification among Lebanese political parties towards what happened.”

“I think yesterday broke all rules, all borders,” Salam added. “It went beyond because in Lebanon, this is considered, you know, an act of terror. … That’s why I’m terribly concerned that this will lead to further violence, and this will definitely escalate the situation.”

CNBC also spoke to Lebanon’s health minister, Firas Abiad, who said the attacks and the subsequent floods of injured casualties were a shock to the country’s hospital system.

“We had around 2,800 patients who presented to the emergency rooms, which eventually we had 12 fatalities,” after the first wave of device explosions, Abiad said. “We had almost 300 patients in critical conditions, and almost 450 patients who required operations for eye injuries, hand injuries, amputations. … There were more than 90 hospitals that were involved in receiving patients.”

The attacks are a blow to Lebanon’s already fragile infrastructure, which suffers daily power cuts, and its economy, which is one of the most indebted in the world and has undergone a series of crises in recent years.

“We are working in a low resource environment,” Abiad said. “If there is a major escalation, it will put a major stress on the health system. There is no questioning about that.”

U.S. officials are reportedly scrambling to find a diplomatic solution that avoids an all-out war, as Israel moves more of its troops and military hardware further north to the Lebanon border area. Just hours before the first wave of devices — pagers — began exploding, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to return Israel’s northern residents, who were evacuated last year, back to their homes.

And on Wednesday, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Israel’s focus has moved to its northern front, starting a “new phase” of the war. The Times of Israel reported earlier that day that the Israel Defense Forces’ 98th Division was being deployed to northern Israel, after months of fighting in the Gaza Strip.

“The position of the Lebanese government has been very clear from day one that Lebanon does not want war … we’ve believed that a diplomatic solution is the best option” Abiad said.

“But unfortunately, the escalation that we have seen in the last two days … I’m not sure that this is going to help us reach that diplomatic solution.”