The president and founder of a Taiwanese pager company linked to the detonation of thousands of pagers targeting Hezbollah in Lebanon was questioned by prosecutors late into the night on Thursday, then released.

Israel’s operation against Hezbollah members in Lebanon and Syria through booby-trapped pagers and walkie-talkies was years in the making, and its use now ramped up a high-risk campaign aimed at deeply disrupting the group.

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant did say on Wednesday, however, that his country's war with Iran's so-called proxy groups in the region had entered a "new phase," announcing a shift to the north of Israel after 11 months of intense conflict with Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

One Hezbollah official said the episode was the biggest security breach in the group's history. The operations, which appeared to throw Hezbollah into disarray, played out alongside Israel's 11-month-old war in Gaza and heightened fears of an escalation on its Lebanese border and the risk of a full-blown regional war.

Taiwan's government and Bulgarian authorities Friday both denied making the exploding pagers used by Hezbollah in Lebanon.