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, authorities said. Hezbollah and the Lebanese government blamed Israel for what appeared to be a sophisticated, long-range attack.

Among the injured was the Iranian ambassador to Lebanon. The mysterious explosions occurred in the midst of rising tensions between Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah, which has been in conflict since the Hamas attack on October 7, the war in Gaza.

The exploded pagers were apparently purchased by Hezbollah after the group’s leader ordered his members to stop using cellphones in February and warned them they could be tracked by Israeli intelligence. A Hezbollah official told The Associated Press the pagers were a new brand but declined to say how long they had been in use.

At around 3:30 p.m. local time on Tuesday, as people shopped for groceries, sat in cafes or rode cars and motorcycles in the afternoon rush hour, the pagers began to heat up in their hands or pockets and then explode – leaving blood-splattered scenes and panicked passersby.

Many of the victims appeared to be members of Hezbollah, but it was not immediately clear whether others were carrying pagers.

The explosions occurred mainly in areas where the group has a strong presence, particularly in a southern Beirut suburb and in the Bekaa region of eastern Lebanon, as well as in Damascus, 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 Israeli military declined to comment. The explosions came hours after Israel’s domestic intelligence agency said it had foiled a Hezbollah attempt to kill a former senior Israeli security official with a planted explosive device that could be detonated remotely.

State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said the United States had “no prior knowledge of this incident” and was not involved. “At this point, we are gathering information,” he said.

Experts said the pager explosions indicated a long-planned operation. The operation may have been carried out by infiltrating the supply chain and rigging the devices with explosives before they were delivered to Lebanon.

Whatever the means, the attack targeted an extraordinary number of people with hundreds of small explosions – wherever the pager wearer happened to be – and left some maimed.

An online video shows a man browsing fruits and vegetables in a grocery store when the bag he is carrying on his hip explodes, causing him to fall sprawling to the ground and passersby to run away.

Wounded people were brought to overcrowded hospitals on stretchers, some with hands missing, their faces partially blown off or gaping holes in their hips and legs, AP photographers reported. On a main street in central Beirut, a car door was splattered with blood and the windshield was cracked.

Lebanon’s Health Minister Firas Abiad told Qatari broadcaster Al Jazeera that at least nine people were killed in the explosions, including an eight-year-old girl. Around 2,750 people were injured, 200 of them seriously. Most suffered injuries to their faces, hands or stomachs.

Eight of the dead were apparently Hezbollah members. The group confirmed in a statement that at least two members were killed in the pager bombings. One of them was the son of a Hezbollah lawmaker in parliament, according to the Hezbollah official, who asked not to be identified. The group later announced that six more members were killed on Tuesday, but gave no details.

“We hold the Israeli enemy fully responsible for this criminal aggression, which was also directed against civilians,” Hezbollah said, adding that Israel “will certainly receive its just punishment.”

The Iranian state news agency IRNA reported that the country’s ambassador, Mojtaba Amani, suffered superficial injuries from an exploding pager and was being treated in a hospital.

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah had previously warned members of the group not to carry mobile phones because Israel could use them to track and target them.

Sean Moorhouse, a former British officer and bomb disposal expert, said videos of the explosions suggested a small explosive charge – as small as a pencil eraser – had been placed inside the bombs. They must have been tampered with before being dropped, most likely by Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence service, he said.

Elijah J. Magnier, a senior political risk analyst based in Brussels, said he had spoken to Hezbollah members who had examined pagers that had failed to explode. The explosions, he said, appeared to be triggered by an error message sent to all devices, causing them to vibrate. The user then had to click buttons to stop the vibration. The combination detonated a small amount of explosive hidden inside, ensuring the user was present when the blast went off, he said.

Israel has a long history of deadly operations far beyond its borders. This year, Israeli airstrikes in Beirut killed Saleh Arouri, a senior Hamas officialAnd a high-ranking Hezbollah commanderA mysterious explosion in Iran, for which Israel is also blamed, killed Ismail Haniyathe supreme leader of Hamas.

Israel has previously killed Hamas fighters with explosive-laden cell phones and is widely considered to be the mastermind of the Stuxnet computer virus attack on Iran’s nuclear program in 2010.

The pager bombings are also likely to have heightened Hezbollah’s concerns about security and communications vulnerabilities as Israeli politicians threaten to escalate the months-long conflict. The almost daily exchanges of fire between Israel and Hezbollah have killed hundreds of people in Lebanon and several dozen in Israel, and displaced tens of thousands on both sides of the border.

Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, the UN Special Coordinator for Lebanon, condemned the attack and warned that it represented “an extremely worrying escalation in an already unacceptably unstable context”.

On Tuesday, Israel said it was now time to stop Hezbollah attacks in the north to allow residents to return to their homes. an official war aimIsraeli Defense Minister Gallant said this week that the focus of the conflict was shifting from the Gaza Strip to northern Israel and that time was running out for a diplomatic solution with Hezbollah. He said: “The direction is clear.”

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This story has been updated to correct the name of the son of the Hezbollah lawmaker killed in a pager explosion.

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Associated Press writers Hussein Malla, Hassan Ammar, Fadi Tawil and Sarah El Deeb in Beirut, Jon Gambrell in Dubai, Amir Vahdat in Tehran, Michael Biesecker in Washington, Josef Federman in Jerusalem and Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed to this report.