Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant did say on Wednesday, however, that his country's war with Iran's so-called proxy groups in the region had entered a "new phase," announcing a shift to the north of Israel after 11 months of intense conflict with Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

One Hezbollah official said the episode was the biggest security breach in the group's history. The operations, which appeared to throw Hezbollah into disarray, played out alongside Israel's 11-month-old war in Gaza and heightened fears of an escalation on its Lebanese border and the risk of a full-blown regional war.

The source of Wednesday’s explosions was not immediately clear, but the blasts came a day after thousands of pagers used by Hezbollah blew up across Lebanon.

A debate has broken out in the U.S. over whether the attacks on Hezbollah members' pagers and walkie-talkies violate international law, and here is what we know so far. Two consecutive attacks on Hezbollah using exploding pagers and walkie-talkies in Lebanon and Syria killed at least 12 people,

Israel’s government is in turmoil and the United States is trying to head off a wider conflict in Lebanon, leaving officials to wonder about the timing of the attack.