> Very few actual civilians ended up hurt by the detonations, much fewer than attacks by conventional weapons.
The reports are 4,000 wounded and 12 killed unintended targets in order to kill 42 targets.
On what planet is that “very few actual civilians”? I think you knew full well before posting that’s a ridiculous claim which is why you did it anonymously.
This is not correct. Each one that had this pager was connected to Hezbollah, i.e. a soldier of Hezbollah. This attack was meant to "disable" a very big portion of Hezbollah, which it did (4000 of them).
This is one of the most sophisticated attacks to avoid civilian casualty.
> This is one of the most sophisticated attacks to avoid civilian casualty.
127 civilians Lebanese civilians killed since the ceasefire by the party you claim is avoiding civilian casualties, btw. very careful bunch
"The reports" are that 12 were killed total, not that 12 civilians were killed. Only 2 of the killed were civilians as far as I can tell. Several of those who people on Twitter tried to claim were civilians, including a doctor, were admitted by Hezbollah to be Hezbollah members and given Hezbollah funerals.
I've never heard of "42 targets", and given 12 people died total, obviously 42 targets were not killed.
You should provide some sourcing for your numbers.
The figure of merit in a military strike is casualties, not KIA; it's the "wounded" part you actually care about (in fact, in some tactical situations, wounding is preferable to killing, as it ties up adversary logistical resources).
Since the pagers that were targeted were exclusively used by Hezbollah (which fought an actual civil war with the Lebanese security forces specifically in order to establish its own telecom network), I would be extraordinarily wary of any source that has claimed more injuries to noncombatants than to combatants.
You can still tell a story where the pager attack was unacceptable owing to civilian casualties: there could be so many civilian casualties that any number of combatant casualties wouldn't justify it. But if you're claiming that there were more casualties to noncombatants over small explosions from devices carried principally in the pockets of combatants, it is rational to draw the conclusion that your reasoning (and sourcing) is motivated.
> it is rational to draw the conclusion that your reasoning (and sourcing) is motivated.
Have you provided any sources at all for you numerous claims throughout this thread? Would it also me rational to draw a the conclusion that someone who has provided no sources at all is also engaging in “motivated reasoning”? At least be consistent.
No, it isn't. Hezbollah is an occupying military force in Lebanon, responsive only to a minority of its population, that happens to have a political party attached. It is the IRGC's faction of the Lebanese Parliament, except to the extent that it operates its own parallel government when that body is inconvenient to it.
Fair enough, 12 total only includes the original pager attack, not the subsequent radio one. However, you seem to have made the same mistake. 42 people were killed total, but that does not mean that there were 42 targets.
In any case, if Hezbollah themselves admit that 1500 of their fighters were injured by the attack (according to your own source), it seems extremely dishonest to claim that all 4000 were civilians or that there were only 42 targets.
The report is 4,000 civilians injured (which means they just didn't die -- people lost fingers, limbs, eyes, etc.)
Presumably if you have thousands of Hezbola people walking around within their homes, businesses, hopistals, shops, etc. it makes sense you'd have many civilian injuries when these went off. There wasn't a geo fence around them and if someone was in an NICU or preschool the explosions were indiscriminate.
So while there was some element of precision in placement of who had these pagers, there was zero awareness (by design) to where they actually were when they all exploded.
I haven't seen a report of 4000 civilians injured. I have seen a report of 4000 people injured across the two attacks, but presumably some fraction of these are targets.
42 killed, of whom Hezbollah said 12 were civilians (later admitting some of the 12 were fighters).
Historical average is about half of the wounded or killed in conflicts to be civilians. < 12/42 would be a relatively "good" ratio.
You didn’t see 4,000 because you didn’t look for it. It’s literally in the wikipedia article linked in the thread you’re responding to with multiple associated citations.
You make an assumption that of the 4000 people wounded /all/ were civilians, which is odd, considering that explosive was in a device given out to Hezbollah members.
The problem is, 2750 + 750 injured is less than 4000, and it doesn't make sense that none of the injured were targets but >30/42 of those killed were.
We're talking about a tiny amount of explosives in each pager. Sure, it could lightly wound a bystander under perfect circumstances, but it's not going to create a big confluence of major injuries. <6 grams of PETN--we're talking about a risk of injury at roughly arm's reach.
To be clear, that claim of 4,000 comes from a member of Hezbollah:
> According to the Lebanese government, the attack killed 42 people,[11] including 12 civilians,[12] and injured 4,000 civilians (according to Mustafa Bairam, Minister of Labour and a member of Hezbollah).
The wikipedia page's other reference claiming that the majority of those injured were civilians is also vague. For instance, it writes, "On 26 September, Abdallah Bou Habib, Lebanon's Foreign Minister, confirmed that most of those carrying pagers were not fighters, but civilians like administrators"
> It was an attack mostly on Hezbollah, but a lot of civilians got hurt in the process, because not everybody is sitting there fighting on the front. These are people who have pagers or have telephones. They are regular people. Some of them are also fighters, but not most of them. A lot of them are administrators working here and there. . . .
This is a very different claim that what the article reads. "Administrators" and "not fighters" is a very different thing than "civilian". A woman working in my building also works in the Army's HR department during the day. She's literally a member of the military, but it's also not wrong to say she is "not a fighter" and an "administrator".
In short, the idea that we have credible evidence that the 4,000 people who were injured (and more, importantly, those that were actually maimed rather than receiving light injuries) were mostly civilians doesn't seem to pan out.
but we have the benefit of seeing live videos from actual shops where these hezbollah members were, and you can see the explosion was small enough to not hurt anyone in the vicinity
even if very close, one of the videos shows a supermarket line, and no one around is hurt
>42 people were killed total, but that does not mean that there were 42 targets.
So they only managed to hit 30 targets with 12 misfires… that makes it even worse.
> In any case, if Hezbollah themselves admit that 1500 of their fighters were injured by the attack (according to your own source)
That’s 1500 in addition to the 4,000 civilians. The fact they managed to wound 2.5x+ as many civilians as targets isn’t exactly making them look better…
I vouched for your post because your question is legitimate and asked in an appropriate manner; there is no good reason to flag it.
The answer to your question is yes: the "4,000 civilians wounded" figure is attributed to Mustafa Bairam, a high-ranking Hezbollah member. I have not seem any corroborating sources. As far as I can tell every mention of that number, including Wikipedia, traces back to him. Obviously this is a highly biased source that should not be trusted blindly.
For the IDF, a 28.6% civilian death rate is actually quite good. Their own classified data reveals an 83% civilian casualty rate in Gaza—nearly three times worse.
The Lebanon pager attack: 12 civilians (including 2 children) killed out of 42 total deaths (28.6% civilian casualty rate).
Gaza genocide: Leaked IDF intelligence documents show 8,900 militants killed out of 53,000 total deaths as of May 2025 (83% civilian casualty rate).
You understate your point: the 83% rate is much, much more than 3x worse. To kill 100 intended targets, a 28.6% civilian death rate means you'll need to kill `N / (100 + N) = 0.286` (N = 40.06) civilians. With an 83% civilian death rate, to kill 100 intended targets, you need to kill `N / (100 + N) = 0.83` (N = 488) civilians. It is about 12x worse to have an 83% civilian death rate compared to a 28.6% rate.
there is no classified idf data of 83% civilian casualty rate. there is data that idf can identify by name 17% of casualties as hamas/etc member. if there are 10 people with machine guns and rpg and you blow them up with a bomb, they don't become civilians just because you don't know their names
>> Sources within the Israeli intelligence community cited in the report raised concerns about how deaths were categorized, with one source claiming people were sometimes "promoted to the rank of terrorist after their death" in the database. <<
According to Hezbollah sources 1500 of their terrorists were taken out of commission due to this attack. Making the death ratio 42/1500 or 3% while if only taking the civilian ratio that's even lower.
Even the 12 civilian count is probably higher than reality because it is doubtful that 12 civilians had access to a military clandestine communication device
Regarding the leaked IDF document this was leaked to a minor blog yet cannot be seen anywhere.
But let's entertain it as real, these are 8000 named Hamas terrorists known for certain by one intelligence unit in the IDF to be dead. This only means the minimum amount of Hamas terrorists, this doesn't take into account the other armed groups in Gaza that had a prewar strength of 10,000s of terrorists or the Hamas members who are only known by uncertain intelligence to have been killed.
Taking that number and reducing it from the Hamas published death count (an organization that kidnapped babies for political goals, but is incapable of lying, and was caught faking death counts before) to get the civilian death count is very unscientific to be extremely mild
Hezbollah is designated as a terrorist organization by:
Argentina
Australia
Austria
Bahrain
Canada
Colombia
Czech Republic
Ecuador
Estonia
European Union
France
Germany
Gulf Cooperation Council
Guatemala
Honduras
Israel
Kosovo
Lithuania
Netherlands
New Zealand
Paraguay
Serbia
Slovakia
United Arab Emirates
United Kingdom
United States
They're military and political personnel. Terrorist designation is a made up political thing as Trump has made obvious. Hezbollah has done nothing that Israel hasn't also done.
Military personal wear uniforms, are clearly identifiable in their operations & movements and have standards of behavior in line with jus ad bellum & jus in bello.
The numbers you state are from the Lebanese government and Hizbollah. So I don't think we can assume they are accurate. I don't have any better numbers, though.
You specific argument though misuses even those numbers. 42 is the number of people actually killed. I couldn't figure out how many were targeted (how many pagers did explode), but I'd assume the number could be much higher than the number of deaths. Without that number we cannot determine how well targeted this was. I also don't think it is plausible that for every target you injure 100 bystanders. So I would assume the number of targets was at least an order of magnitude higher.
There's also another number from Hizbollah, that 1500 of their people were injured. But no idea it those would be included in the 4000 wounded number.
The reports are 4,000 wounded and 12 killed unintended targets in order to kill 42 targets.
On what planet is that “very few actual civilians”? I think you knew full well before posting that’s a ridiculous claim which is why you did it anonymously.