Hezbollah exploding pager trail runs from Taiwan to Hungary
PUBLISHED TUE, SEP 17 202410:34 PM EDTUPDATED 2 HOURS AGO1/2
A Taiwanese pager maker denied on Wednesday that it had produced devices that wounded thousands of Hezbollah operatives in Lebanon when they exploded, an audacious attack that raised the prospect of a full-scale war between the Iran-backed group and arch-foe Israel.Gold Apollo said the devices were made by under licence by a company called BAC, based in Hungary’s capital Budapest.
Israel’s spy agency Mossad, which has a long history of pulling off sophisticated attacks on foreign soil, planted explosives inside pagers imported by Hezbollah months before Tuesday’s detonations, a senior Lebanese security source and another source told Reuters.
The death toll rose to 12, including two children, Lebanese Health Minister Firass Abiad said on Wednesday. The attack wounded nearly 3,000 people, including many of the group’s fighters and Iran’s envoy to Beirut.
Iran-backed Hezbollah has vowed to retaliate against Israel, whose military declined to comment on the blasts. The two sides have been engaged in cross-border warfare since the Gaza conflict erupted last October, fuelling fears of a wider Middle East conflict that could drag in the United States and Iran.
Jordan’s Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi accused Israel of pushing the Middle East to the brink of a regional war by orchestrating a dangerous escalation on many fronts.
“Hezbollah wants to avoid an all-out war. It still wants to avoid one. But given the scale, the impact on families, on civilians, there will be pressure for a stronger response,” said Mohanad Hage Ali of the Carnegie Middle East Center.
Hezbollah, Iran’s most powerful proxy in the Middle East, said in a statement it would continue to support Hamas in Gaza and Israel should await a response to the pager “massacre” which left fighters and others bloodied, hospitalized or dead.
One Hezbollah official said the detonation was the group’s “biggest security breach” in its history.
Footage from hospitals reviewed by Reuters showed men with various injuries, some to the face, some with missing fingers and gaping wounds at the hip where the pagers were likely worn.
The plot appears to have been many months in the making, several sources told Reuters. It followed a series of assassinations of Hezbollah and Hamas commanders and leaders blamed on Israel since the start of the Gaza war.
Trail leads to Budapest
The senior Lebanese security source said the group had ordered 5,000 pagers from Gold Apollo, which several sources say were brought into the country earlier this year. Gold Apollo founder Hsu Ching-Kuangsaid the pagers used in the explosion were made by a company in Europe that Gold Apollo named in a statement as BAC.(Are they trying to blame Hungary, to give Orban a hard time?)
“The product was not ours. It was only that it had our brand on it,”Hsu told reporters at the company’s offices in the northern Taiwanese city of New Taipei on Wednesday.
The stated address for BAC Consulting in Hungary’s capital Budapest was a peach building on a mostly residential street in an outer suburb. The company name was posted on the glass door on an A4 sheet.
A person at the building who asked not to be named said BAC Consulting was registered there but did not have a physical presence. The CEO of BAC Consulting, Cristiana Barsony-Arcidiacono says on her LinkedIn profile that she has worked as an adviser for various organizations including UNESCO. She did not respond to emails from Reuters.
BAC’s registered activities are wide ranging, from computer game publishing to IT consulting to crude oil extraction.
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/09/18/israel-planted-explosives-in-hezbollahs-taiwan-made-pagers-reuters-reports.html