Cigarette smoke and low chatter filled the air as hundreds gathered in Beirut’s southern suburbs on Wednesday afternoon to pay their respects to four people killed in the brazen pager attacks that rocked the country the day before. 

Weeping mourners wore badges bearing the faces of the 12 people killed in the co-ordinated blasts, among them an 11-year-old boy whose coffin was to be paraded through the winding streets of the working-class neighbourhood from which Hizbollah draws support.

Attendees tried to process the chaos and violence that had ripped through the country as thousands of pagers used by Hizbollah operatives blew up when — according to two people familiar with the group’s preliminary investigations — a coded message triggered the mass detonations of explosives implanted into the devices, causing mayhem.