The Taiwanese government has said components in thousands of pagers used by the armed group Hezbollah that exploded in Lebanon earlier this week were not made on the island.

The comments come after Taiwanese company Gold Apollo said it did not make the devices used in the attack.

The Lebanese government says 12 people, including two children, were killed and nearly 3,000 injured in the explosions on Tuesday.

The incident, along with another attack involving exploding walkie-talkies, was blamed on Israel and set off a geopolitical storm in the Middle East.

“The components for Hezbollah’s pagers were not produced by us,” Taiwan’s economy minister Kuo Jyh-huei told reporters on Friday.

He added that a judicial investigation is already underway.

“I want to unearth the truth, because Taiwan has never exported this particular pager model,” Taiwan foreign minister, Lin Chia-lung said.

Earlier this week, Gold Apollo boss Hsu Ching-Kuang denied his business had anything to do with the attacks.

He said he licensed his trade mark to a company in Hungary called BAC Consulting to use the Gold Apollo name on their own pagers.

The BBC’s attempts to contact BAC have so far been unsuccessful. Its CEO Cristiana Bársony-Arcidiacono told the US news outlet NBC that she knew nothing and denied her company made the pagers.

The Hungarian government has said BAC had “no manufacturing or operational site” in the country.

But a New York Times report said that BAC was a shell company that acted as a front for Israel, citing Israeli intelligence officers.

In another round of blasts on Wednesday, exploding walkie-talkies killed 20 people and injured at least 450, Lebanon’s health ministry said.

Japanese handheld radio manufacturer Icom has distanced itself from the walkie-talkies that bear its logo, saying it discontinued production of the devices a decade ago.

Iran-backed Hezbollah has blamed Israel for what it called “this criminal aggression” and vowed that it would get “just retribution”.

The Israeli military has declined to comment.

The two sides have been engaged in cross-border warfare since the Gaza conflict erupted last October.

The difficulty in identifying the makers of the devices has highlighted how complicated the global electronics supply chain has become.

Good morning. A scoop to start: The EU could bar imports of coffee from a number of countries within weeks unless Brussels delays a ban on products from deforested areas, commodity companies and governments have warned.

Today, the head of the International Energy Agency tells our energy correspondent that Europe isn’t doing enough to protect Ukraine’s power infrastructure, and our competition correspondent reveals a demand from 20 EU capitals for the European Commission to cut more red tape than it has already promised.

Have a great weekend.

Cold comfort

The head of the IEA has accused Europe of being too reticent in its support for Ukraine, calling for more generators and repair equipment for the war-torn country ahead of a difficult winter, writes Alice Hancock.

Context: Ukraine has suffered heavy attacks on its energy infrastructure by Russia, particularly in late August in retaliation for its incursion into Russia’s Kursk region. Half of all Ukraine’s energy infrastructure has been destroyed, roughly equivalent to the capacity of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.

In a report published yesterday, the IEA said Ukraine’s electricity deficit this winter could reach as much as 6GW, around a third of anticipated peak demand. The power shortfall this summer was 2.5GW when Kyiv was already enduring long blackouts.

“It’s time for everybody to understand that this winter could be consequential in Ukraine,” Fatih Birol, director-general of the IEA, told the FT. “It is the most pressing energy security issue today in the world.”

A lack of energy supplies meant a knock-on impact on the operation of hospitals, schools, water supplies and other “major implications”, Birol added.

European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen will meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv today to discuss the situation. They will also talk about where to direct €100mn the EU has given Ukraine for repairs and renewable energy, which came from the profits from immobilised Russian assets in the EU.

The EU will also provide €60mn in humanitarian aid for shelters and heaters. Average winter temperatures in Ukraine vary between -4.8C and 2C, according to World Bank figures.

Birol said there were “major shortages” of many crucial parts, including transformers, grid equipment and diesel generators. He said Europe had been too “conservative” in sending electricity to Ukraine and could step up exports without jeopardising European supply.

European consumers could help by cutting their own electricity demand, allowing more power to go to their eastern neighbour. This would be a “very decent way of showing solidarity”, Birol said.

Ukraine should have enough gas to see it through early winter, but the IEA said that once current contracts expire at the end of the year, there could be a need to increase west-to-east gas flows to Ukraine from central and eastern European neighbours.

Chart du jour: Rising tide

The Alternative for Germany looks set to win another state election in Brandenburg on Sunday, just weeks after the far-right party won its first regional poll in Germany’s postwar history. But the Social Democrats are closing in.

Cut it

If Europe wants to be globally competitive, it needs to go further than what Brussels plans to boost the single market, says a paper co-authored by 20 member states, including the Netherlands and Germany, writes Javier Espinoza.

Context: Two recent landmark reports — by former Italian leaders Mario Draghi and Enrico Letta — spelt out the stark risks of failing to reform the single market. They highlighted the need to reduce regulatory pressure on companies and to make it easier for businesses to access funding in order for the bloc to compete with the US and China.

Ursula von der Leyen’s second term at the head of the European Commission had to “continue to cut red tape . . . going beyond the announced 25 per cent reduction of reporting requirements”, the joint document states, referring to an existing promise.

She should also back “specific digital tools” that would allow companies to focus less on regulatory reporting.

The signatories, which also include Luxembourg and the Czech Republic, called on the commission to provide “an enabling and transparent regulatory environment” — technical language for forcing capitals to align their rules.

Lex Delles, Luxembourg’s economy minister, pointed to persistent barriers within the single market where “retailers cannot pick their suppliers in the country of their choice because of territorial supply constraints imposed by wholesalers”.

He added: “By prohibiting such practices, we would show businesses and consumers that the EU can deliver concrete results for them.”

What to watch today

1. European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen travels to Kyiv.

Now read these

BY James Halpin, Foreign News Reporter

ISRAEL’S pager plot could be inspired by a spy film and the country is goading Hezbollah into starting a war, an ex-Mossad agent says.

Nearly 3,000 people were injured on Tuesday and 12 were killed in the sabotage attack leaving Lebanon in chaos and hospitals full of bloodied and injured.

Avner Avraham claims Israel is directly challenging Hezbollah to start a war in retaliation, so it can then invade Lebanon and wipe them out.

Avraham says the chess move attack was Israel saying: “Don’t mess with us”.

He said: “The attack on Tuesday was so strong and wide if they [Hezbollah] do start a limited war, they will lose immediately.  

“In the north, we have to start a limited war and we prefer that Hezbollah would make the first mistake.

“The response would be a huge damage to Lebanon, it would go 100 years back.”

But, the 28-year spy veteran says Hezbollah has been left weak with so many people injured and Lebanon plunged into chaos.

“Now they don’t have a different kind of communication system, all their hospitals are full with injured people, this is the best time to attack them.”

Avraham said he believed Israel needed to attack Lebanon and create a “dead zone” inside the country where nobody lived.

That buffer would provide safety for the Israelis living in the north of the country – tens of thousands of whom have been displaced since fighting began last year.

“To bring back the families to the north, you cannot bring them to the world without destroying and pushing all the Hezbollah from the border.”

Avraham also said it is possible that the attack could have been inspired by gadgets used in spy films, something he did as an agent.

“Sometimes we use examples ideas from James Bond films, we took ideas, I can tell you this for sure.

He said: “No one could write the script for Tuesday. This is the real example of thinking outside the box… All the world saw what happened Tuesday, this is the money time.

“If Mossad is doing something and wants to declare it, they will declare it… In all cases they just do it and disappear.

“That’s the whole idea, you don’t know who is responsible for this, you don’t have any idea.”