After thousands of pagers and radio devices exploded in two separate incidents in Lebanon - injuring thousands of people and killing at least 37 - details are still being pieced together as to how such an operation was carried out.
Hezbollah |
Lebanon and Hezbollah, whose members and communication systems were targeted, have blamed Israel – though Israel is yet to comment.
The BBC has followed a trail from Taiwan, to Japan, Hungary, Israel and back to Lebanon.
How were the pagers compromised?
Some early speculation suggested that the pagers could have been targeted by a complex hack that caused them to explode. But that theory was quickly dismissed by experts.
To cause damage on the scale that they did, it is probable they were rigged with explosives before they entered Hezbollah’s possession, experts say.
Images of the broken remains of the pagers show the logo of a small Taiwanese electronics manufacturer: Gold Apollo.
The BBC visited the company’s offices, situated on a large business park in a nondescript suburb of Taipei.
The company's founder, Hsu Ching-Kuang, seemed shocked. He denied the business had anything to do with the operation.
“You look at the pictures from Lebanon,” he told reporters outside his firm's offices. "They don’t have any mark saying Made in Taiwan on them, we did not make those pagers!”
Instead - he pointed to a Hungarian company: BAC Consulting.
Mr Hsu said that three years ago he had licensed Gold Apollo’s trademark to BAC, allowing them to use Gold Apollo’s name on their own pagers.
He said the money transfers from BAC had been "very strange" - and that there had been problems with the payments, which had come from the Middle East.
source: bbc