Hunt for origins of Lebanon pager attack widens to Bulgaria, Norway

London (Reuters): Bulgaria and Norway became new focal points on Thursday of a global hunt for who supplied Hezbollah with the thousands of pagers that exploded in Lebanon this week in a deadly blow to the militant group.

Security sources said that Israel was responsible for the explosions on Tuesday that killed 12 people, injured more than 2,300 and raised the stakes in a growing conflict between the two sides. Israel has not directly commented on the attacks.

How and with whose help the pager attack was carried out was not yet known, although so far there were possible leads in Taiwan, Hungary and Bulgaria.

It is not clear how and when the pagers were weaponised so they could be remotely detonated. The same question remains for the hundreds of hand-held radios used by Hezbollah that exploded on Wednesday in a second wave of attacks.

One theory is that the pagers were intercepted and hooked up with explosives after they left factories. Another is that Israel orchestrated the whole deadly supply chain.

Bulgarian authorities said on Thursday that its interior ministry and state security services had opened an investigation into a company's possible ties. They did not name the company they were investigating.