Civil Defense rescuers carry an injured man whose portable pager exploded at Al-Zahraa Hospital in Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

BEIRUT (AP) — Pagers used by hundreds of members of the militant group Hezbollah exploded almost simultaneously in Lebanon and Syria on Tuesday, killing at least nine people — including an 8-year-old girl — and wounding several thousand, officials said. They blamed Israel for what appeared to be a sophisticated, remote attack.

Among the wounded was Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon. The mysterious incident comes amid rising tensions between Israel and Iranian-backed Hezbollah, which have been trading fire on the Israel-Lebanon border since an Oct. 7 Hamas attack that sparked the Gaza war.

The pagers that exploded were recently acquired by Hezbollah after the group’s leader ordered members to stop using cellphones, warning them they could be tracked by Israeli intelligence. A Hezbollah official told The Associated Press that the pagers were a new brand that the group had not used before.

At about 3:30 p.m. local time Tuesday, the pagers began heating up and then exploding in the pockets and hands of those wearing them — particularly in the southern suburbs of Beirut and the Beqaa region in eastern Lebanon, where Hezbollah has a strong presence, and in Damascus, where several Hezbollah members were wounded, Lebanese security officials and a Hezbollah official said. The Hezbollah official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press.

The AP contacted the Israeli military, which declined to comment. The explosions came hours after Israel’s internal security agency said it had foiled an attempt by Hezbollah to kill a former senior Israeli security official using an explosive device that could be detonated remotely.

Police officers inspect a car where a pager exploded, Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

Experts said the pager explosions indicated it was a long-planned operation — although the means were not immediately known. Investigators had no information about how the pagers were detonated or whether explosives were somehow smuggled into each pager.

Regardless of the method of attack, an extremely wide group of people were targeted, and the explosions occurred simultaneously, regardless of the location of the pager provider. Some people were maimed.

One video circulating online showed a man picking through vegetables in a grocery store when the bag he was carrying on his hip exploded, sending him to the ground and passersby running away. AP photographers at area hospitals said emergency rooms were overflowing with patients, some with missing hands or pieces of legs shot out of their pockets.

Lebanon’s Health Minister, Firas Abiad, said at least nine people were killed, including an 8-year-old girl, and 2,750 injured — 200 of them critically — in the explosion. Most had injuries to their faces, hands or stomach areas.

Hezbollah said in a statement that two of its members were among those killed. A Hezbollah official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, identified one of the dead as Mahdi Ammar, the son of one of the group’s members in the Lebanese parliament.

An ambulance transports injured people whose pager exploded in Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)

“We hold the Israeli enemy fully responsible for this criminal aggression, which also affects civilians” Hezbollah added that Israel will “he will certainly suffer the punishment he deserves.”

Iran’s state news agency IRNA reported that the country’s ambassador, Mojtaba Amani, was superficially wounded in a pager explosion and was in hospital.

Earlier, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah warned members of the organization not to carry cellphones because they could be used by Israel to track their movements and carry out targeted attacks.

Photos released Tuesday show traces of detonation, said Alex Plitsas, a weapons expert at the Atlantic Council. “A lithium-ion battery fire is one thing, but I’ve never seen one explode. It looks like a small explosive device.” Plitsas said.

This raises the possibility that Israel knew about the shipment of pagers intended for Hezbollah and managed to modify it before delivery, he added.

Another option is an electronic impulse “which was sent from afar and burned the devices, causing them to explode” said Yehoshua Kalisky, a scientist and senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies, a Tel Aviv think tank. “This wasn’t a random act; it was deliberate and conscious.”

Israel has a long history of conducting lethal operations behind enemy lines.

In January, Saleh Arouri, a senior Hamas official, was killed in an airstrike on a Beirut apartment building that was blamed on Israel. In July, Israel assassinated Hezbollah’s top commander in another airstrike. Hours later, Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s top leader, was killed in a mysterious explosion in Iran that was also blamed on Israel.

Israel has a history of killing Hamas militants using explosive-laden cellphones. Israel is widely believed to have been behind the Stuxnet computer virus attack on Iran’s nuclear program in 2010.

Tuesday’s explosions came at a time of heightened tensions between Lebanon and Israel. Hezbollah and Israeli forces have clashed almost daily for more than 11 months amid the war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, an ally of Hezbollah that is also backed by Iran.

The clashes have killed hundreds of people in Lebanon and dozens in Israel, and displaced tens of thousands on both sides of the border. Israel said on Tuesday that halting Hezbollah attacks in the north so that residents can return to their homes is now an official war goal.

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The article corrects the name of the son of a Hezbollah MP who was killed in a pager explosion.

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AP journalists Abby Sewell, Hussein Malla, Hassan Ammar, Fadi Tawil and Sarah El Deeb in Beirut, Jon Gambrell in Dubai, Amir Vahdat in Tehran and Josef Federman in Jerusalem contributed to this report.