Fears of 'all-out war' as Israel kills 32, wounds thousands in new Lebanon device blasts

A second wave of explosions from rigged devices detonated by Israel killed 32 people and wounded thousands of others in Lebanon on Wednesday, officials said, stoking fears of an all-out war between Tel Aviv and Hezbollah.

A source close to Hezbollah said walkie-talkies used by its members blew up in its Beirut stronghold, with state media reporting similar blasts in south and east Lebanon.

AFPTV footage showed people running for cover when an explosion went off during a funeral for Hezbollah militants in south Beirut in the afternoon.

At a press briefing in Beirut, Lebanon’s Health Minister Firass Abiad said that at least 32 people were killed and thousands injured in back-to-back coordinated explosions on Tuesday and Wednesday.

They came a day after the simultaneous explosion of hundreds of paging devices used by Hezbollah killed 12 people, including two children, and wounded up to 2,800 others across Lebanon, in an unprecedented attack blamed on Israel.

There was no comment from Israel, which only hours before Tuesday’s attacks had announced it was broadening the aims of its war with Gaza to include its fight against Hezbollah.

"The centre of gravity is moving northward," Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said during a visit to an air base on Wednesday. "We are at the start of a new phase in the war."

Israeli officials have remained tight-lipped about the explosions that led the television news bulletins and dominated newspaper headlines.

Amos Harel of the left-leaning Haaretz newspaper said the pager and walkie-talkie blasts had put "Israel and Hezbollah on the brink of all-out war".

Hezbollah said Israel was "fully responsible for this criminal aggression" and vowed revenge.

Although Hezbollah has not yet directly retaliated, on Wednesday night thousands of Israelis received false alerts to their phones last night warning them to enter bomb shelters immediately, according to Israeli media reports. 

The website of Channel 12 News reported a series of false messages issuing an "emergency warning" to "immediately enter a protected area" in what the outlet called "psychological warfare".

On Thursday, Haaretz also reported that eight Israelis were wounded by anti-tank fire from Hezbollah, which appears to be retaliation for an Israeli airstrike on several areas of south Lebanon overnight. 

Lebanon’s hospitals overwhelmed

The White House warned all sides against "an escalation of any kind".

"We don't believe that the way to solve where we're at in this crisis is by additional military operations at all," US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters.

Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib warned that the "blatant assault on Lebanon's sovereignty and security" was a dangerous development that could "signal a wider war".

The influx of so many casualties all at once overwhelmed hospitals in Hezbollah strongholds.

At a Beirut hospital, doctor Joelle Khadra said "the injuries were mainly to the eyes and hands, with finger amputations, shrapnel in the eyes -- some people lost their sight".

A doctor at another hospital in the Lebanese capital said he had worked through the night and that the injuries were "out of this world -- never seen anything like it".

Since October, Israel and Hezbollah have exchanged almost daily fire, with Israel killing over 800 people, including at least 150 civilians, with over 110,000 people displaced from their homes in Lebanon's south.

In northern Israel, 23 soldiers have been killed with no civilian deaths, while 96,000 civilians have been displaced.

Agencies contributed to this report