Exploding Hezbollah pagers in apparent Israeli attack made by Hungarian firm, Taiwanese firm says

TAIPEI – A Hungary-based company was responsible for manufacturing the pagers that exploded in Lebanon and Syria as part of an apparent Israeli operation against Hezbollah's communications network, another company whose brand was used on the devices said on Wednesday.

A day earlier, pagers belonging to the militant Hezbollah group exploded almost simultaneously in Lebanon and Syria. At least twelve people, including two children, were killed and almost 3,000 injured. Hezbollah and the Lebanese government blamed Israel for the apparently sophisticated long-range attack.

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

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

Tuesday's attack – and the fact that Hezbollah blamed Israel – has reignited fears that an open war could break out between the two enemies. Despite periodic escalations, the two countries have carefully avoided this so far, but Israeli leaders have warned several times in recent weeks that they could expand their operations against Hezbollah in Lebanon.

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

BAC appeared to be a shell company.

“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.

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

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

At the headquarters in a building in a residential area of ​​Budapest, Associated Press journalists saw the names of several companies, including BAC Consulting, posted on notes in a window.

A woman who came out of the building and did not want to give her name said the site listed the addresses of the headquarters of various companies.

BAC 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 AP tried to reach Bársony-Arcidiacono through her LinkedIn page and could not establish any 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 health workers 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, 9-year-old Fatima Abdullah. The Health Ministry had previously given her age as 8.

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 in Beirut, Zeke Miller in Washington and Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, contributed to this report.