OSLO/BUDAPEST: Norway and Bulgaria became new focal points of an international hunt for who supplied Hezbollah with the thousands of pagers that detonated in Lebanon this week in a deadly blow to the group.
Reuters news agency cited security sources as saying that Israel was responsible for the blasts on Tuesday that killed around 12 people, injured over 2,300 and raised the stakes in an increasing conflict between the two sides. Israel has not directly commented on the blasts.
Reuters reported that how the pager blasts were carried out was not yet known, although so far there were possible leads in Bulgaria, Hungary and Taiwan.
Bulgarian officials said that its interior ministry and state security services had started a probe into a firm’s possible ties. However, they did not name the firm they were investigating. Earlier, Gold Apollo stated that the pagers were made by BAC Consulting, a firm based in the Hungarian capital Budapest.
The owner and CEO of BAC Consulting did not return multiple requests for comment, Reuters reported. However, the CEO told NBC News that her firm worked with Gold Apollo but that she had nothing to do with the making of the pagers.
Lebanon’s Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah on Thursday warned that Israel will receive “just punishment” for the waves of communications device blasts that killed 37 people and wounded about 3,000 over two days in Lebanon.
