Hezbollah’s explosive beepers made by Hungarian company, Taiwanese firm says

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — Taiwan’s Gold Apollo said Wednesday it has licensed its trademark on the Pagers that exploded in Lebanon and Syria as part of an apparent Israeli operation targeting Hezbollah’s communications network, but they were manufactured by another Budapest-based company.

Pagers used by the militant group Hezbollah Bomb attacks exploded almost simultaneously in Lebanon and Syria on Tuesday, killing at least nine people, including an 8-year-old girl, and wounding nearly 3,000 others.

Hezbollah and the Lebanese government have accused Israel of being behind what appears to be a sophisticated remote attack.

A U.S. official said Israel informed the United States Tuesday after the operation, in which small amounts of explosives hidden in the pagers detonated, ended. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the information publicly.

The AR-924 pagers were manufactured by BAC Consulting KFT, based in the Hungarian capital, according to a statement released Wednesday by Gold Apollo.

“Under the cooperation agreement, we authorize BAC to use our trademark for the sale of products in the designated regions, but the design and manufacturing of the products are the sole responsibility of BAC,” the statement read.

Gold Apollo Chairman Hsu Ching-kuang told reporters on Wednesday that his company has had a licensing agreement with BAC for three years, but did not provide proof of the contract.

Around 3:30 p.m. Tuesday, as people shopped, sat in cafes or drove cars and motorcycles, the pagers in their hands or pockets began to heat up and then explode, leaving behind blood-spattered scenes and panicked passersby.

It appears that many of those affected were members of HezbollahBut it was not immediately clear whether non-Hezbollah members were also carrying explosive pagers.

The explosions occurred mainly in areas where the group has a strong presence, including the southern suburbs of Beirut and the Bekaa region in eastern Lebanon, as well as in Damascus, according to Lebanese security officials and a Hezbollah official. The latter spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

Hezbollah, which has blamed Israel for the attack, said in a statement Wednesday morning that it would continue its usual strikes against Israel “as it has done every day” in what it described as a front of support for its ally, Hamas, and the Palestinians in Gaza.

“This path is continuous and distinct from the difficult settling of accounts that the criminal enemy must await for the massacre it committed on Tuesday against our people, our families and our fighters in Lebanon,” he said. “This is another settling of accounts that will come, God willing.”

Hezbollah began firing rockets over the border into Israel on October 8, the day after a deadly attack by Hamas in southern Israel that sparked a massive Israeli counteroffensive and the ongoing civil war. war in GazaSince then, Hezbollah and Israeli forces have exchanged strikes almost daily, killing hundreds in Lebanon and dozens in Israel and displacing tens of thousands on both sides of the border.

In Beirut hospitals on Wednesday, the chaos of the previous night had largely subsided, but relatives of the wounded continued to wait.

Lebanese Health Minister Firas Abiad told reporters during a tour of hospitals Wednesday morning that many of the injured had serious eye injuries and others had amputated limbs. Journalists were not allowed to enter hospital rooms or film patients.

The health minister said the injured were distributed among all hospitals in the region to avoid any single facility being overloaded and added that Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Syria and Egypt have offered to help treat the patients.

An Iraqi military plane landed in Beirut on Wednesday carrying medical supplies, airport officials said. Abiad said the plane was carrying 15 tons of medicine and medical equipment.

Experts believe explosive materials were planted in the pagers before they were delivered and used as part of a sophisticated infiltration of the supply chain.

The AR-924 pager, billed as “rugged,” contained a rechargeable lithium battery, according to specifications posted on Gold Apollo’s website before it was apparently removed Tuesday after the sabotage attack. It could receive text messages of up to 100 characters.

It also claimed to have up to 85 days of battery life. That would be crucial in Lebanon, where Power outages are frequent After years of economic collapsePagers also operate on a different wireless network than mobile phones, making them more resilient in an emergency, one reason many hospitals around the world still rely on them.

According to Taiwan’s Ministry of Economic Affairs, Gold Apollo exported 260,000 pagers between the beginning of 2022 and August 2024, including more than 40,000 between January and August this year. The ministry said the pagers were mainly exported to European and American countries and that it had no records of direct exports of Gold Apollo pagers to Lebanon.

For Hezbollah, the militants also saw the pagers as a way to circumvent what is seen as intensive Israeli electronic surveillance of mobile phone networks in Lebanon.

“The phone we have in our hands – I don’t have a phone in my hands – is a listening device,” Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah warned in a speech in February.

He then added: “I tell you that the phone that you have in your hands, that your wife and children have in their hands, that is the agent. It is a deadly agent, not a mere agent. It is a deadly agent that provides precise and accurate information. So you have to be very serious when you deal with it.”

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Associated Press writers Bassem Mroue and Abby Sewell in Beirut, Zeke Miller in Washington and Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, contributed to this report.