A Taiwanese company has denied responsibility for manufacturing and distributing a batch of explosive pagers bearing its name that killed at least nine people and injured thousands more in Lebanon on Tuesday.
According to press reports citing Lebanese and US 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 accused Israel of tampering with the pagers and causing them to explode.
Company founder Hsu Ching-Kuang told reporters on Wednesday that the pagers were manufactured by BAC Consulting, a Budapest-based company that licenses the Gold Apollo logo and brand. 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 bank transfers to Gold Apollo had raised concerns. He did not provide further details and defended the decision to grant the license to BAC.
“When we worked with them, we were very careful,” Hsu said. “If signing a contract brings business, why wouldn’t we accept it?”
Gold Apollo, which was founded in 1995 and employs about 30 people in Taiwan, said it held an emergency meeting and welcomed government officials into the office following news that some of the devices used in the attack were identified as the Gold Apollo AR924 model, for sale on its website.
An employee surnamed Lin, who declined to provide her full name or title when contacted by Gold Apollo's phone line, said the company did not directly fill Hezbollah's pager order and that BAC handles the vast majority of device sales to Middle Eastern customers.
BAC's website says the company cooperates with different countries to sell telecom products internationally, including in new markets for Asian companies. The company and its founder, Cristiana Arcidiacono-Barsony, whose name is listed on the website, did not respond to emails seeking comment.
It is unclear how the unprecedented attack was carried out, but security experts said the beeper unit could have been rigged with explosives and activated remotely. Israel has neither confirmed nor denied any role in the incident.
Hezbollah is a Lebanese Shiite militant group backed by Iran and one of Lebanon's most powerful political parties. It has been at war with Israel for decades, and recently launched rockets into northern Israel in support of its ally Hamas, the Palestinian armed group in the Gaza Strip that accuses Israel of illegally occupying Palestinian land.
Israel and Hamas have been at war since Oct. 7, when Hamas launched a surprise attack on more than 1,200 Israelis and took 250 hostages. The Israeli military responded by invading Gaza, a conflict that has killed 40,000 Palestinians, according to estimates by Gaza officials.
The war in Gaza reignited the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah last October, with rocket exchanges displacing thousands of people on both sides of the Israel-Lebanon border.
In recent months, Hezbollah has begun using pagers to communicate and avoid Israeli surveillance of its mobile phones.
The Times special correspondent in Taipei Xin-yun Wu contributed to this report.
