Japanese firm denies involvement in manufacturing Hezbollah's exploding walkie-talkies

The Japanese manufacturer of the brand of walkie-talkies allegedly linked to explosions targeting Hezbollah on Wednesday has denied responsibility for producing the explosive devices.

“There’s no way a bomb could have been integrated into one of our devices during manufacturing. The process is highly automated and fast-paced, so there’s no time for such things," Yoshiki Enomoto, a director at ICOM, told Reuters.

ICOM said that it ceased production of the radio models identified in the attacks over a decade ago, noting that many of the units currently in circulation are counterfeit.

"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," Enomoto added.