HONG KONG — A Taiwanese electronics manufacturer said Wednesday that its branded pagers used by members of the militant group Hezbollah and that exploded simultaneously across Lebanon on Tuesday were made by a Hungary-based company.
The blast killed at least 12 people and injured more than 2,750, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry. Iran-backed Hezbollah said in a statement on Wednesday that it would face “harsh justice” over the blast and blamed Israel.
Israel has not commented directly on the explosion, but two U.S. officials and a senior Middle Eastern diplomat told NBC News that Israel was behind the attack.
Images circulating online showed the pager destroyed in Lebanon with characteristics matching those made by Taiwan’s Gold Apollo Co., whose founder and president, Xu Qingguang, told reporters on Wednesday that the pager was made by another company licensed to use his brand.
“We have an agent in Europe that we’ve been working with for three years and that agent distributes all of our products,” Xu said at the company’s office in New Taipei City, northern Taiwan.
“We’re not a big company, but we’re a responsible company that cares about its products,” he said.
Gold Apollo in a statement identified the other company as Hungary-based BAC Consulting, which has been authorized to use Gold Apollo’s logo to sell products in certain territories, but “BAC remains solely responsible for the design and manufacturing of the products,” the statement said.
Reached by phone Wednesday, BAC Consulting CEO Christiana Barthony-Arcidiacono confirmed that her company had worked with Gold Apollo. But when asked about the pagers and the explosion, she said, “I don’t make pagers. I’m just a middleman. I think you’re wrong.”
According to Hungarian Ministry of Justice records, a company called BAC Consulting was registered as a new company on May 21, 2022. Its main business activities include retailing telecommunications products, as well as management consulting, jewelry manufacturing and fruit cultivation.
Records dated May 2, 2020 suggest that a company by that name existed in the past, but was closed in 2020.
Zoltán Kovács, a spokesman for the Hungarian prime minister, said on Twitter that authorities had confirmed that BAC Consulting was a trade intermediary with no manufacturing or operations in Hungary and that “the equipment mentioned has never been in Hungary.”
He stressed that “this incident does not pose a national security risk.”
A Gold Apollo spokesman declined further comment Wednesday, citing the ongoing investigation.
Taiwan’s Ministry of Economic Affairs said on Wednesday that Gold Apollo exported 260,000 pagers, mainly to European and American markets, between 2022 and August 2024. The ministry said in a statement that there have been no reports of explosions linked to those products and that there is no record of the company directly exporting pagers to Lebanon.
“Were these products actually altered? … were they made by a different manufacturer and simply had the Apollo brand name applied to them? This part is still under investigation by our authorities,” a ministry spokesman told NBC News.
Tuesday’s explosion came amid growing fears that tensions between Israel and Lebanon could escalate into all-out war. Israel and Lebanon-based Hezbollah, which opposes Israel’s military attacks on the Gaza Strip, have been conducting cross-border attacks since the start of the Israel-Hamas war last October, forcing thousands of people in both countries to flee.
Lebanon’s Foreign Ministry condemned what it called an “Israeli cyber attack” and said it would lodge a complaint with the UN Security Council.
Janine Hennis-Plusschaert, the UN special coordinator for Lebanon, said on Tuesday that the explosion represented “an extremely worrying deterioration of an already unacceptably unstable situation.”
State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said Tuesday that the U.S. had “no prior knowledge of this incident” and was not involved.
But two US officials told NBC News that Israel was behind the attack, while a senior Middle East diplomat, when asked about the pager attack, commented, “This is definitely an Israeli operation.” The US and other Western governments are still gathering information about the attack and how it was carried out, two US officials and one Western official said.
It was unclear why Israel carried out the attack at that time, or whether it was an opportunistic operation or a more strategic one that led to other actions, the officials said.
Authorities did not acknowledge reports about how the explosive device was modified and designed to detonate.
NR Jenzen Jones, director of Armament Research Services, a technology intelligence and consulting firm, said the video footage suggested the pager contained an explosive device.
“The scale of this suggests a complex supply chain attack, rather than a scenario where devices were intercepted and altered in transit,” he said on X.
Hezbollah members eschew mobile phones for fear that Israel could use them to track and monitor them, preferring pagers. Lebanese authorities on Tuesday warned their citizens to avoid using wireless communication devices until further notice.
Hezbollah said it was investigating the blast and that its “criminal enemies will face severe justice for the massacre they committed on Tuesday against our people, our families and our fighters in Lebanon.”
The group earlier said “a young girl and two brothers” were among those killed in the blast, some of which appeared to be captured on closed-circuit television footage and shared on social media. Mohammed Mahdi, the son of Hezbollah MP Ali Ammar, was also reportedly killed.
Gold Apollo’s Su said he also feels victimized and is considering filing a lawsuit.
“I’m a businessman,” he said. “Why did I get involved in this attack?”