Japanese handheld radio maker Icom said Thursday it had nothing to do with a walkie-talkie that exploded in the hands of a Hezbollah terrorist in Lebanon and that the particular model of the walkie-talkie in question was discontinued 10 years ago.
Hezbollah Radio Exploded The pager explosion occurred Wednesday, a day after the incident. Several Hezbollah operatives who were injured by the exploding walkie-talkie were reportedly attending the funeral of a comrade who was killed in the pager bombing.
The pager that exploded had a label on it from a well-known Taiwanese company called Gold Apollo. Claimed Gold Apollo said it had nothing to do with the bombing and that the pagers that exploded were manufactured under license. Shady Hungarian company It's called BAC Consulting.
Similarly, Osaka-based Icom said The company has not produced or exported IC-V82 radios or their battery packs for nearly 10 years. Secrete The battery contains explosive chemicals.
“The IC-V82 is a portable radio that was produced and exported to regions including the Middle East from 2004 until October 2014. Production of the radio was discontinued approximately 10 years ago, and the company has not shipped any of the units since then,” an Icom statement said.
“The batteries necessary to operate the device have also been discontinued, and the hologram sticker to identify counterfeit products has not been attached, so we are unable to confirm whether the product was shipped by our company,” the company said.
An Icom executive suggested that Hezbollah's radios might be cheap copies made by an unauthorized third party.
“If it turns out to be a fake, we need to investigate who and how made a bomb that resembles our product. If it is real, we need to trace its distribution route to find out how it got there,” said Icom director Yoshiki Enomoto. said Reuters reported on Thursday.
“It is impossible for a bomb to be built into our devices during manufacturing. The manufacturing process is highly automated and fast-paced, so there is no time for such a thing,” Enomoto said.
Lebanon has one authorized distributor of Icom products, Power Group. A Power Group representative said the company does not import discontinued models such as the IC-V82. Reuters Checked A check of the company's website showed that the discontinued units were no longer available for sale.
The BBC on Thursday Reported Hezbollah bought a large batch of the discontinued walkie-talkies about five months ago, though it's unclear who sold them. According to the BBC, it took “just a few seconds” to find the IC-V82 for sale online.
Hezbollah Sources Claimed Israeli intelligence triggered the pager explosion because Israel feared that Hezbollah would discover more powerful bombs planted in their walkie-talkies.
“We managed to find some problems with the electronics but not the pagers. They fooled us. Hats off to the enemy,” one Hezbollah source said.
Hezbollah was reportedly still distributing Gold Apollo-brand pagers until just hours before the series of explosions began on Tuesday.
Lebanese security authorities said Israel carried out one of its most intense air campaigns of 2024 on Friday, launching at least 70 strikes on Hezbollah territory following the explosion of pagers and walkie talkies.
