A Taiwanese company denied responsibility for the making and distribution of a batch of exploding pagers branded with its name that killed at least nine people and wounded thousands more in Lebanon 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-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 press 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 the office following news that some devices used in the attack were identified as a Gold Apollo AR924 model, for sale on its website.
An employee surnamed Lin, who declined to provide her full name or title when reached through the Gold Apollo phone line, said the company did not directly fill the pager order from Hezbollah, and that BAC handles the vast majority of device sales from Middle East 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 for comment.
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 in the incident.
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 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 Israelis and seized 250 hostages. Israeli military responded by invading Gaza, a conflict that has kill 40,000 Palestinians, Gaza officials estimate.
The war in Gaza reignited conflict between Israel and Hezbollah last October, with tit-for-tat exchanges of rocket fire that have displaced thousands of people on both sides of the Israel-Lebanon border.
Hezbollah has started using pagers for communication in recent months to avoid Israeli surveillance of its cell phones.
Times special correspondent Xin-yun Wu in Taipei contributed to this report.