Exploding Hezbollah walkie-talkies appear to have been made in Japan

Images of the walkie-talkies that exploded today examined by Reuters showed an inside panel labeled “ICOM” and “made in Japan.”

According to its website, ICOM is a Japan-based radio communications and telephone company.

The company has said that production of several models of the ICOM hand-held radio have been discontinued, including the IC-V82, which appeared to closely match those in images from Lebanon on Wednesday and which was phased out in 2014.

There was no immediate reply from ICOM to a Reuters request for comment.

News ????#Lebanon A walkie-talkie explodes in #Hezbollah's #Beirut stronghold.

#Lebanon that a new wave of explosions has occurred involving various wireless devices and electrical equipment causing sever
several casualties, according to news.#LebanonExplosion #Beirut #Israel pic.twitter.com/rZDSXSpEJK

— Kuldeep soora (@soora_kuldeep) September 18, 2024

The hand-held radios were purchased by Hezbollah five months ago, around the same time that the pagers were bought, said a security source.

Thousands of pagers exploded yesterday.

A Taiwanese pager maker denied that it had produced the pager devices.

Gold Apollo said the devices were made under license by a company called BAC, based in Hungary’s capital Budapest.

However, the pager devices were never in Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s government says in a statement.

Taiwanese pager firm Gold Apollo said the model of pagers used in the attack against Hezbollah were made by Budapest-based BAC Consulting, adding it had only licensed its brand to the company and was not involved in the production of the devices.

Reuters calls and emails to BAC on Wednesday were not answered.

“Hungarian authorities have established that the company in question is a trading-intermediary company, which has no manufacturing or other site of operation in Hungary,” government spokesman Zoltan Kovacs says on Facebook.

“It has one head of operations in Hungary on its listed address and the devices referenced have never been to Hungary.”

Hungarian national security authorities would cooperate with all involved international partner services and partner organizations in further investigations, Kovacs said, adding the issue did not represent a national security risk to Hungary.

Israel has been blamed for the blasts, but has not commented.