The Deadly Pager Attacks in Lebanon

To the Editor:

Re “New Explosions Rock Hezbollah, Leaving 20 Dead” (front page, Sept. 19):

Does anyone else fear that we’ve entered a new vicious and extremely dangerous era with Israel’s apparently covert use of day-to-day electronic devices, rigging them to be explosives that can then be triggered at will?

Imagine these scenarios: What about the children standing next to their father who used his pager, which then blew up and killed or maimed the children? What about the pager on the kitchen table next to the grandmother? What about the wife, cousin, neighbor, bus passenger, shopkeeper or office worker who gets blown up because they were standing next to someone who used their pager?

Is it now OK to create explosives hidden in electronic devices and then send them out into the public with no way of knowing where they will be or who will be around them when you trigger them?

Where is the condemnation of this from the U.S.? Or are we just gliding into a new brutal era that’s fathoms deeper in terror and pain?

Kevin Lawler
Omaha

To the Editor:

Re “Pagers Used by Hezbollah Simultaneously Blow Up” (front page, Sept. 18):

When the prime minister of Lebanon calls Israel’s attack on Hezbollah operatives a “serious violation of Lebanese sovereignty,” it’s hard to take him seriously.

The decades-long presence of Hezbollah, a terrorist organization that is much better armed than the Lebanese Army and does not answer to the Lebanese government — and the discovery that Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon reportedly carries a Hezbollah pager — makes a sad mockery of the notion of Lebanese sovereignty.