The mystery surrounding exploding Hezbollah pagers ranges from …

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — The pagers used by Hezbollah that exploded in an apparent Israeli attack were made by a company based in Hungary, another company said Wednesday, as details of the mysterious operation emerged. The attack exacerbated the simmering conflict between Israel and Hezbollah that threatens to escalate into all-out war.

A day earlier, pagers belonging to the militant group exploded almost simultaneously in Lebanon and Syria. At least twelve people, including two children, were killed and around 2,800 injured. Hezbollah and the Lebanese government blamed Israel for the attack.

A U.S. official said Israel informed the U.S. after the attack, in which small amounts of explosives hidden in pagers were detonated. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the information publicly.

The sophisticated attack rekindled fears that the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza could escalate into a larger regional conflict. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Wednesday that the United States was still assessing how the attack might affect efforts to reach a ceasefire in Gaza.

Hezbollah and Israeli forces have exchanged fire almost daily since October 8, the day after a deadly Hamas attack in southern Israel sparked the war. Since then, attacks have killed hundreds in Lebanon and dozens in Israel, while displacing tens of thousands on both sides of the border. Hamas and Hezbollah are allies and both receive support from Iran.

Despite periodic escalations, Hezbollah and Israel have carefully managed to avoid a full-scale war. However, the Israeli leadership has warned several times in recent weeks that it may step up its operations against Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Israel began moving more troops to the border with Lebanon on Wednesday as a precautionary measure, said an official familiar with the troop movements who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

The AR-924 pagers used in Tuesday's attack were manufactured by BAC Consulting KFT, based in the Hungarian capital Budapest, according to a statement from Gold Apollo, a Taiwanese company that authorized the use of its brand on the pagers.

Gold Apollo Chairman Hsu Ching-kuang told reporters on Wednesday that the company has had a licensing agreement with BAC for three years.

“Under the cooperation agreement, we authorize BAC to use our trademark for product sales in certain regions, but the design and manufacture of the products are solely the responsibility of BAC,” Gold Apollo said in a statement.

BAC Consulting Kft. was registered as a limited liability company in May 2022, according to its documents. The registered capital is 7,840 euros, the documents show, and the turnover was $725,768 in 2022 and $593,972 in 2023.

At the headquarters of a building in a residential area of ​​Budapest, the names of several companies, including BAC Consulting, are posted on pieces of paper in a window.

A woman who came out of the building and declined to give her name said the site listed the addresses of the headquarters of various companies.

BAC's parent company is registered to Cristiana Rosaria Bársony-Arcidiacono, who describes herself on her LinkedIn page as a strategic advisor and business developer. Among other things, Bársony-Arcidiacono says on the page that she served on the board of the Earth Child Institute, a sustainability group. The group does not list Bársony-Arcidiacono as a board member on its website.

The Associated Press attempted to reach Bársony-Arcidiacono through her LinkedIn page but was unable to establish a connection between her or BAC and the exploding pagers.

The attack in Lebanon began on Tuesday afternoon when pagers heated up in their owners' hands or pockets and then exploded – leaving blood-splattered scenes and panicked passersby.

Most of those affected appeared to be Hezbollah members or people with links to them, whether fighters or civilians. However, it was not immediately clear whether people without links to Hezbollah were also affected.

The Health Ministry said that nurses and two children were among those killed. In the village of Nadi Sheet in the Bekaa Valley, dozens of people gathered to mourn the death of one of the children, nine-year-old Fatima Abdullah.

Her mother, dressed in black and wearing a yellow Hezbollah headscarf, wept along with other women and children as they gathered around the little girl's coffin before the funeral.

In a statement on Wednesday morning, Hezbollah said it would continue its normal attacks against Israel as part of what it describes as a support front for its ally Hamas and the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

“This path is uninterrupted and independent of the severe reckoning that the criminal enemy must expect for his massacre on Tuesday,” it said. “God willing, there will be another reckoning.”

In Beirut's hospitals, the chaos of the previous night had largely subsided by Wednesday, but the relatives of the injured still had to wait.

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

Abiad said the injured had been taken to different hospitals in the area to avoid overloading individual facilities. He added that Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Syria and Egypt had offered their help in treating the patients.

An Iraqi military plane with 15 tons of medicines and medical equipment on board landed in Beirut on Wednesday, he said.

Experts believe that the pagers were filled with explosives before delivery.

Touted as “rugged,” the AR-924 pager contains a rechargeable lithium battery, according to specifications posted on Gold Apollo's website before it was removed following the attack.

The battery is designed to last up to 85 days, which would be crucial in Lebanon, where power outages are common after years of economic collapse. Pagers also run on a different cellular network than cell phones, making them more resilient in emergencies – one of the reasons many hospitals around the world still rely on them.

For Hezbollah, the pagers were also a way to circumvent Israel's alleged intensive electronic surveillance of Lebanese mobile phone networks.

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

Taiwan's Ministry of Economic Affairs said Gold Apollo exported 260,000 sets of pagers from early 2022 to August 2024, including more than 40,000 sets between January and August this year. The ministry said it had no records of direct exports of Gold Apollo pagers to Lebanon.

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This story has been updated to correct the age of one of the children killed. She was 9, not 8.

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Spike reported from Budapest and Mroue from Beirut. Associated Press journalists Abby Sewell and Kareem Chehayeb in Beirut, Simina Mistreanu in Taipei, Melanie Lidman and Josef Federman in Jerusalem, Zeke Miller in Washington and Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, contributed to this report.