Japanese Walkie-Talkie Manufacturer Denies Explosive Links Amid Deadly Lebanon Blasts

Japanese company Icom denies manufacturing explosive walkie-talkies involved in blasts that killed 25 people and injured hundreds in Lebanon. The firm claims the devices were either counterfeit or modified post-manufacture. Investigations are ongoing, with distributors distancing themselves from the discontinued models implicated in the incident.

Japanese company Icom has vehemently denied any role in the manufacture of explosive walkie-talkies linked to recent attacks on the Hezbollah armed group in Lebanon, which resulted in 25 fatalities and hundreds of injuries. The company asserts that its manufacturing process is highly automated, leaving no room for the integration of bombs into its devices.

The detonations of hand-held radios occurred on Wednesday in Beirut's suburbs and the Bekaa Valley, following earlier pager explosions on Tuesday that killed 12 people, including two children, and injured 3,000 others. Icom has confirmed that production of the implicated radio models ceased a decade ago, suggesting that most devices still in circulation are likely counterfeit.

Yoshiki Enomoto, a director at Icom, stated, "If it turns out to be counterfeit, then we'll have to investigate how someone created a bomb that looks like our product. If it's genuine, we'll have to trace its distribution to figure out how it ended up there." A representative from Lebanon's Power Group, the country's sole official distributor of Icom, also distanced the company from the incident, noting that discontinued models were not part of their imports.