Pager trail runs from Taiwan to Hungary

Devices programmed to go off with the activation of code; blast exposed Hezbollah's weakness

The detonation of thousands of pagers targeting Hezbollah in Lebanon has left a mysterious trail from Taiwan to Hungary, while raising the prospect of another full-scale war in the Middle East between the Iran-backed group and Israel.

Israel's Mossad spy agency, which has a long history of pulling off sophisticated attacks on foreign soil, planted explosives inside pagers imported by Hezbollah months before Tuesday's detonations that killed 11 people, a senior Lebanese security source and another source told Reuters.

The operation was unprecedented Hezbollah security breach that saw thousands of pagers explode across Lebanon, wounding 2,700 people, including many of the group's fighters and Iran's envoy to Beirut.