Gold Apollo, a Taiwanese pager maker, rejected producing the devices used in the devastating attacks in Lebanon, which killed at least 12 people and injured almost 3,000 others.
On Tuesday night, thousands of pagers used by Hezbollah members detonated simultaneously throughout Lebanon, pushing local emergency services into overdrive as hospitals began to overflow with injured patients. According to reports, the devices included explosives that were set by Israel’s espionage agency, Mossad, according to Lebanese security officials.
“The product was not ours. It was only that it had our brand on it, according to Reuters,” Hsu Ching-Kuang, founder and president of Gold Apollo, told reporters in the Taiwanese city of New Taipei on Wednesday. Then he revealed that the gadgets, a type known as the AR-924, were produced by Budapest, Hungary-based BAC Consulting.
“To use our brand trademark for product sales in specific regions, but the design and manufacturing of the products are entirely handled by BAC,” Gold Apollo stated in a statement published by Reuters.
BAC did not immediately reply to a request for comment from multiple reporters.
Hezbollah, a political and militant group with strong Iranian support that controls a large portion of Lebanon, claimed to have given out the pagers to its members, many of whom had given up using cell phones to avoid Israeli monitoring.
Hezbollah denounced the action as “Israeli aggression,” while Israel remained silent about the explosions. Mojtaba Amani, Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon, was hurt in the incident, and the son of a parliamentarian for Hezbollah was killed.
The Lebanese organization, which engages in almost daily gunfire with Israel to the south, has threatened to retaliate, sparking fears of full-scale bloodshed in an already strife-torn region. Over the nearly twelve months since Israel started its war against the Palestinian militant group Hamas in Gaza on October 7, Hezbollah has fired thousands of rockets into Israel. Thousands of people have had to leave their homes in Israel and Lebanon.
The leadership of Hezbollah has stated in the past that while it does not want a larger conflict, it would fight if Israel provoked it. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced his government’s intention to repatriate Israeli citizens, who were uprooted by Hezbollah strikes, to their homes in the country’s north just hours before the mass pager explosion.
