Image source, Reuters

Author and former BBC journalist Kim Ghattas was on her way home from a funeral in Beirut yesterday when the explosions started to happen.

She describes to BBC Radio 4's Today programme that she felt "emotion after emotion and trauma after trauma".

"It was really a scene of chaos across the city because people didn't instantly understand what was happening," Ghattas adds.

"We first thought it was one large explosion in the south of Beirut, it then became clear there were simultaneous small explosions everywhere.

"Then we started seeing CCTV from inside shops and supermarkets of these small explosions targeting people doing their groceries or paying at the checkout.

"Then for hours on end [we heard] the wail of sirens. The internal security forces were asking people to get off the streets because traffic was overwhelming the city.

"It was really a national traumatic event," Ghattas tells the programme.

Ghoncheh Habibiazad
BBC Monitoring

Mojtaba Amani, the Iranian ambassador to Beirut, was injured following the pager explosions in Lebanon yesterday. His wife, Narges Qadirian, announced that he was "slightly" injured and had been taken to hospital, but was doing well.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi spoke with Amani's wife by phone yesterday to discuss the ambassador's condition, external.

Qadirian further posted on X, external today, saying that her husband's treatment was "going well".

As we reported earlier, a Lebanese source and another source told Reuters that Mossad - the Israeli spy agency - placed explosives in thousands of Hezbollah pagers, which were imported months ago.

Separately, Israeli and US sources tell Axios and Al-Monitor the explosions were initially planned as the opening move in an "all-out" offensive against Hezbollah.

But in recent days, Israel became concerned Hezbollah had become aware of the plan - so they were detonated early.

"It was a use it or lose it moment," a US official tells Axios.

Image source, Social media

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah will make an address tomorrow, a statement from the Iran-backed group says.

Nasrallah will speak at 15:00 BST (14:00 GMT) and address "the latest developments", the group adds.

Image source, Reuters

• Warning: This post contains graphic detail

Our colleagues at Newsday have spoken to Tracy Chamoun, a writer and politician who previously served as Lebanon’s ambassador to Jordan.

She spoke to the programme from Beirut - describing yesterday's events as "pretty horrifying".

She explains she was driving at the time "in that area - what we call the southern suburbs, which is the stronghold of Hezbollah".

While on a flyover she describes seeing a "huge commotion", with many people lying on the road before there was a "scramble" to take people to hospital.

Chamoun saw one man with his eye blown out and another "had half of his face ripped off".

She further suggests: "Most of the surgeries were eye surgeries...

"These pagers emitted a sound before being detonated to encourage people to take them out of their pockets or from their desks and lift them to their heads or their faces."

The Lebanese health minister said yesterday that most injuries appeared to be to faces and hands. You can listen to Chamoun's full interview here.

Image source, Reuters

Rupert Wingfield-Hayes
Reporting from Taipei

As we just reported, it seems the exploding pagers could have been "Gold AR-924" models.

But the founder of Taiwanese electronics manufacturer, Gold Apollo, has denied his company has anything to do with the thousands of pagers that exploded in Lebanon.

The founder, Hsu Ching-Kuang, said his company had signed an agreement with a European based company to manufacture the devices and use his company name.

He told reporters his company had signed an agreement three years ago with a European based company called BAC. It gave the company the right to manufacture its pager design and use his company logo.

"We only provide brand trademark authorisation and have no involvement in the design or manufacturing of this product," he says.

Gold Apollo now says that company, BAC, is based in Budapest, Hungary.

Hsu told reporters he was extremely shocked about what happened in Lebanon, and that his company is also a victim.

Police are inside the Gold Apollo offices in Taipei, questioning staff and examining documents.

Image source, Reu

What can we determine from apparent debris?published at 07:08 British Summer Time 18 September

07:08 BST 18 September

By James Kelly

We've been examining images posted on social media around the time of the blasts, which show fragments of the rear casings of two pagers.

We can't verify whether these pagers were definitely involved in the wave of explosions because they are close-up images with few additional clues as to where they were captured.

Image source, Social media

Labels can be seen on the fragments which would ordinarily show the distributor, model number and operating frequency of the pagers - but because they’re damaged, the information that remains is incomplete.

What can be seen clearly is the word "GOLD" on both fragments, and a partial model number that looks like "AR-9" or possibly "AP-9".

One of the images appears to show a "USB - C" port, its plastic cover peeled back. Three decorative grooves can also been seen.

These indicators seem to point to a model called the Rugged Pager AR-924, made by the Taiwan-based Gold Apollo Company Ltd.

Reuters news agency reports, external that Israel's Mossad spy agency planted a small amount of explosives inside 5,000 Taiwan-made pagers ordered by Lebanese group Hezbollah - months before Tuesday's detonations, citing a senior Lebanese security source and another source.

Reuters also adds that the plot appears to have been many months in the making, citing several sources.

The attack targeted Hezbollah and has left hospitals in Lebanon overwhelmed – some victims have been blinded, while others have needed amputations.

We're re-starting our live coverage after nine people, including a child, were killed as handheld pagers used by members of the militant group Hezbollah exploded across Lebanon on Tuesday afternoon.

Hospitals were inundated with the wounded, with health authorities saying at least 2,800 other people were injured - 200 of them in a critical condition.

Among those wounded was Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon Mojtaba Amani.

Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran, said the pagers belonged “to employees of various Hezbollah units and institutions” and confirmed the deaths of eight of its fighters.

The group has blamed Israel, as has Lebanon's prime minister. The Israeli military have declined to comment.

Panic and shock here as sirens continue to ring outpublished at 23:09 British Summer Time 17 September

23:09 BST 17 September

Nafiseh Kohnavard
Reporting from Beirut

This is something completely different from what Lebanon has witnessed during the past 11 months of cross-border clashes between Hezbollah and Israel.

Unlike in July, when an Israeli airstrike on a Hezbollah stronghold in the southern suburbs of Beirut killed the group's commander Fuad Shukr, we didn't hear any explosions today.

But still, Beirut was shaken by the news that multiple small blasts happened not only in the capital but in other areas of the country as well.

Driving towards downtown Beirut earlier, on one of the main roads of the city, we had to pull over multiple times to open the road for ambulances rushing towards different hospitals. Sirens could be heard late into the night - a sign of how significant this was.

Hezbollah says it’s planning for an "appropriate retaliation", but what that will look like is not yet known.

Today's attacks exposed many members at various levels. While the group says many of those injured are medical staff or administrative personnel and not fighters, this is considered a big blow to Hezbollah’s operation - materially and morally.

Ben Hatton
Live reporter

Pagers used by militant group Hezbollah exploded simultaneously across Lebanon on Tuesday afternoon, with thousands thought to be injured and deaths reported.

The scale and nature of the incident has caught many off-guard - several Middle East security analysts told the BBC it was unprecedented.

Nine people have been confirmed dead and nearly 3,000 injured, 200 of them seriously, Lebanon's minister of public health Firass Abiad said, adding most injuries appear to be to the face and hands.

Hezbollah - an Iranian-backed Lebanese armed group, which is banned as a terrorist organisation in the UK, US and other countries - said eight of its members had been killed, and a young girl, the daughter of a Hezbollah member, was also reported to be among the dead.

Image source, EPA

Hezbollah has blamed Israel and said it will receive "its just punishment". Israel has not directly commented.

The pager explosions came just hours after Israel made the return of residents displaced by Hezbollah attacks in the north of its territory one of its war goals.

You can find out more about the incident, why Hezbollah uses pagers, and see a video appearing to show one of the explosions in our explainer piece here.

For now, though, we're pausing our live coverage - which was brought to you by Sam Hancock, Jacqueline Howard, Francesca Gillett, Adam Durbin, Imogen James, Frances Mao, Tinshui Yeung, Nathan Williams and me.

What can we determine from apparent debris?published at 22:35 British Summer Time 17 September

22:35 BST 17 September

By James Kelly

We've been examining images posted on social media around the time of the blasts, which show fragments of the rear casings of two pagers.

We can't verify whether these pagers were definitely involved in the wave of explosions because they are close-up images with few additional clues as to where they were captured.

Image source, Social media

Labels can be seen on the fragments which would ordinarily show the distributor, model number and operating frequency of the pagers - but because they’re damaged, the information that remains is incomplete.

What can be seen clearly is the word "GOLD" on both fragments, and a partial model number that looks like "AR-9" or possibly "AP-9".

One of the images appears to show a "USB - C" port, its plastic cover peeled back. Three decorative grooves can also been seen.

These indicators seem to point to a model called the Rugged Pager AR-924, made by the Taiwan-based Gold Apollo Company Ltd.

It's not yet clear whether one specific model of pager, or a number of different models, exploded in Lebanon today.

We can bring you some details now, from Lebanon’s public health minister Firass Abiad, about the kinds of injuries being seen in the country after these pager explosions.

Most "appear to be to the face and especially to the eyes, and also the hand with some amputations, whether it’s in the hands or the fingers," he tells the BBC's Newshour programme.

The "vast majority" presenting to emergency rooms are in civilian clothes, he goes on, saying this makes it "very difficult to discern whether they belong to a certain entity like Hezbollah or others".

"But we are seeing among them people who are old or people who are very young, like the child who unfortunately died, and there are some of them who are health care workers."

He describes the incident as "a major escalation at a time when everybody was hoping that things were moving to a kind of cessation of hostilities or some kind of ceasefire" - and says Israel is the "obvious culprit".

As we've been reporting, Israel has not commented on the explosions.

Eight Hezbollah members have died after handheld pagers exploded across Lebanon today, the group says on Telegram.

Lebanon's health ministry had said at least nine people were killed, among them a young girl.

As this is a moving situation, figures can change fast - if they do we'll let you know.

Lufthansa Group says it is suspending all connections to and from Tel Aviv, in Israel, and Tehran in Iran, and will bypass Israeli and Iranian airspace up to and including 19 September due to the "recent change in the security situation".

The update has been made with immediate effect, the German airline group says in a statement, and it will assess the situation further in the coming days.

Airlines that sit under the Lufthansa Group include Lufthansa Airlines, SWISS, Austrian Airlines, Brussels Airlines and Eurowings.

It's not the first time an airline has suspended services to the region since 7 October - Lufthansa Group was among others to suspend some flights in the region in April after Iranian strikes on Israel.

Image source, Getty Images

Image source, Getty Images

We're hearing from the UN special coordinator for Lebanon, Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, who describes what's happened in Lebanon today as "an extremely concerning escalation in what is an already unacceptably volatile context".

She urges all those concerned to refrain from any further action or aggressive rhetoric which could trigger "a wider conflagration that nobody can afford".

• As a reminder: Hezbollah and some Lebanese officials have blamed Israel for the pager explosions, but the Israeli military has not commented. Hamas - at war with Israel in Gaza - has also blamed Israel.

We're beginning to see more images from Lebanon's capital Beirut, one of several locations where handheld pagers exploded on Tuesday.

Here's the scene outside one of the city's hospitals:

Image source, Reuters

Image source, Reuters

Image source, Reuters

Frances Mao
Live reporter

The damage done today to Hezbollah's pager system leaves the group in a vulnerable position, Beirut-based analyst Nicholas Blanford tells me.

He says until Hezbollah is able to "rebuild its comms system", people may not be able to communicate with each other at times of need, and questions what that means for the group over the "coming hours and days".

But Blanford, a fellow at the US-based Atlantic Council, also points out that not all Hezbollah members will use pagers to communicate.

"More senior field officers may not have been affected because they simply do not carry electronic communications devices, relying on messengers."

Image source, Reuters

Some fresh lines from the White House now.

"We continue to believe that there should be a diplomatic resolution to this," says press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.

Her statement comes amid fears of escalation between Lebanon and Israel after pagers - used by Hezbollah - exploded across Lebanon and killed at least nine people and wounded nearly 3,000 more.

Earlier, US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller also said the parties should find a diplomatic solution to the conflict.

Hamas - like Hezbollah and some Lebanese officials - has now blamed Israel for these explosions across Lebanon.

In a statement, the group says Israel has targeted both civilians and fighters in the move, and warned them of the consequences.

The statement also references US support of Israel. The Israeli military has still not commented on the attack.

Hezbollah is a known supporter of Hamas - currently at war with Israel in Gaza - and, like Hamas, is backed by Iran and proscribed as a terrorist organisation by Israel, the UK and other countries.