Hezbollah pager blasts: Taiwan says device parts not made on island

The Taiwanese government has said none of the components in thousands of pagers used by the armed group Hezbollah that exploded in Lebanon earlier this week were made on the island.

Fragments of the pagers that blew up had labels which pointed to Taiwanese manufacturer Gold Apollo. But the firm denied making the devices used in the attack.

The Lebanese government says 12 people, including two children, were killed and nearly 3,000 injured in the explosions on Tuesday.

The incident, along with another attack involving exploding walkie-talkies, was blamed on Israel and marked a major escalation in the conflict between the two sides.

“The components for Hezbollah’s pagers were not produced by us,” Taiwan’s economy minister Kuo Jyh-huei told reporters on Friday.

He added that a judicial investigation is already under way.

“I want to unearth the truth, because Taiwan has never exported this particular pager model,” Taiwan foreign minister, Lin Chia-lung said.

Earlier this week, Gold Apollo boss Hsu Ching-Kuang denied his business had anything to do with the attacks.

He said he licensed his trade mark to a company in Hungary called BAC Consulting to use the Gold Apollo name on their own pagers.

The BBC’s attempts to contact BAC have so far been unsuccessful. Its CEO Cristiana Bársony-Arcidiacono told the US news outlet NBC that she knew nothing and denied her company made the pagers.

The Hungarian government has said BAC had “no manufacturing or operational site” in the country.

But a New York Times report said that BAC was a shell company that acted as a front for Israel, citing Israeli intelligence officers.

In another round of blasts on Wednesday, exploding walkie-talkies killed 20 people and injured at least 450, Lebanon’s health ministry said.

Japanese handheld radio manufacturer Icom has distanced itself from the walkie-talkies that bear its logo, saying it discontinued production of the devices a decade ago.

Iran-backed Hezbollah has blamed Israel for what it called “this criminal aggression” and vowed that it would get “just retribution”.

The Israeli military has declined to comment.

The two sides have been engaged in cross-border warfare since the Gaza conflict erupted last October.

The difficulty in identifying the makers of the devices has highlighted how complicated the global electronics supply chain has become.