A Taiwanese company denied responsibility for making and distributing a batch of exploding pagers branded with its name that killed at least nine people and wounded thousands more in Lebanon on Tuesday.
According to media reports citing Lebanese and American officials, Hezbollah ordered more than 3,000 electronic pagers from Gold Apollo, a manufacturer of wireless communication devices based in New Taipei City.
Hezbollah has blamed Israel for tampering with the pagers and causing them to explode.
The company’s founder, Hsu Ching-kuang, told reporters Wednesday that the pagers were made by BAC Consulting, a Budapest, Hungary-based company that licenses Gold Apollo’s logo and branding. The company said it had no involvement in the design or manufacturing of the product.
Hsu said during a news conference that irregularities in BAC’s wire transfers to Gold Apollo had raised concerns. He provided no further details and defended the decision to license to BAC. “When we were working with them, we were very careful,” Hsu said. “If signing a contract brings in business, why wouldn’t we accept?”
Gold Apollo, which was founded in 1995 and employs about 30 people in Taiwan, said it held an emergency meeting and hosted government officials at its offices after news that some devices used in the attack were identified as Gold Apollo’s AR924 model, for sale on its website.
An employee surnamed Lin who answered the phone at Gold Apollo but declined to provide her full name or title said the company did not directly fill the pager order from Hezbollah, and that BAC handles the vast majority of device sales from Middle Eastern customers.
The BAC website said the firm cooperates with different countries to sell telecommunication products internationally, including in new markets for Asian businesses. The business and its founder Cristiana Arcidiacono-Barsony, named on the website, did not respond to emails seeking comment.
Hungarian officials said Wednesday that BAC is a trading intermediary, with no manufacturing or operational site in Hungary. It has one manager registered at its declared address, and the devices were never in Hungary, tweeted Zoltan Kovacs, a government spokesperson.
It is unclear how the unprecedented attack was carried out, but security experts said the shipment of pagers may have been implanted with explosives and set off remotely. Israel has neither confirmed nor denied any role.
Hezbollah is an Iran-backed Lebanese Shiite militant group and one of Lebanon’s most powerful political parties. It has battled with Israel for decades, most recently firing rockets into northern Israel in support of ally Hamas, the armed Palestinian group in the Gaza Strip that accuses Israel of illegally occupying Palestinian land.
Israel and Hamas have been at war since an Oct. 7 surprise attack by Hamas that killed more than 1,200 people and seized 250 hostages. The Israeli military responded by invading Gaza, a conflict that has killed tens of thousands.
The war reignited conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, with exchanges of rocket fire that have displaced thousands on the Israel-Lebanon border.
Hezbollah started using pagers to avoid Israeli surveillance of its cellphones.
Times special correspondent Xin-yun Wu in Taipei and Times staff writer Nabih Bulos in Beirut contributed to this report.