TWO PEOPLE FROM Taiwanese companies were questioned as part of a probe into pagers that exploded while being used by Hezbollah operatives in Lebanon, investigators said, as top officials insisted the devices were not from the island.

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

Israel's Mossad spy agency planted a small amount of explosives inside 5,000 Taiwan-made pagers ordered by Lebanese group Hezbollah months before Tuesday's detonations, a senior Lebanese security source and another source told Reuters.