Lebanese government officials took more than 100 foreign diplomats and journalists on a tour Monday of the country's only international airport in a bid to refute a British newspaper report that alleged the facility was being used to store Hezbollah weapons.
The unusual tour followed Sunday's Telegraph article quoting anonymous airport workers claiming the existence of a Hezbollah weapons cache at the airport, including artillery, ballistic and anti-tank missiles and explosives.
According to the unsigned Telegraph article, a Beirut airport employee reported seeing “unusually large boxes” arriving on a flight from Iran in November and that a senior member of Hezbollah was supervising customs shipments.
Amid rising tensions between the paramilitary group and Israel, the report sparked a frenzy of denials from Lebanese officials and raised fears that Israel would use it to justify an attack on the airport.
It comes at a delicate time for the country: Since October, when Hezbollah launched a “support front” aimed at reducing pressure on Hamas, the Iran-backed group and Israel have traded daily attacks across the Lebanon-Israel border. .
So far, at least 481 people have been killed in Lebanon, mostly Hezbollah operatives but also 94 civilians, according to counts by monitoring groups and media outlets. In Israel, 17 soldiers have been killed, Israeli authorities say.
Although hostilities between the two sides have largely taken place around the border, clashes have intensified in recent weeks, and many fear a broader attack is just a miscalculation away.
Acting Lebanese Transport Minister Ali Hamieh, a Hezbollah ally, dismissed the Telegraph report as “ridiculous” and said the airport's cargo operations met international standards. He said consultations had already begun with other parts of the Lebanese government to initiate legal proceedings against the Telegraph.
The tour was attended by representatives of diplomatic missions from the European Union, Germany, Spain, Egypt, China, India and Pakistan, among others.
As part of the tour, diplomats and journalists visited two cargo areas at the airport that Hamieh said accounted for all the traffic there, including the Iranian shipments mentioned in the Telegraph report.
“With this article we have gone from [Israeli] airspace violations to psychological warfare through written articles,” he said during a press conference after the tour. He referred to frequent flights by Israeli army fighter jets into Lebanese airspace.
“And now we have proven those articles false,” he told the group. “They're silly articles.”
Ihab Hamada, a member of Hezbollah's political bloc in the Lebanese parliament, told the state-run National News Agency that the group did not need the airport for its weapons.
The official Israeli Foreign Ministry account on social media platform X retweeted the Telegraph article, commenting that “in normal countries, airports are used for travel.”
Israel has attacked the Beirut airport before. In 1968, Israeli special forces destroyed 12 passenger planes and two cargo planes on the airport runway in retaliation for a Palestinian attack on an Israeli airliner.
In 2006, on the same day Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers, Israel bombed the airport and cut off all maritime access to the county.
During the tour, journalists and diplomats were taken through a large warehouse, and airport workers appeared bewildered as the group walked among chaotic stacks of boxes and floor-to-ceiling shelves.
Responding to questions about the report, an airport security official (who did not give his name because he was not authorized to speak to the media) insisted that everything at the airport was in order.
“Of course we haven't seen anything that these reports say,” the officer said.
Richard Mujais, director of state-owned Middle East Airlines Ground Handling (MEAG), the company that handles all cargo at the airport, said the airport's cargo center was certified by several global bodies, including the European Commission and the Agency International Airline. Transport Assn., and that multiple security agencies were involved in screening any incoming shipments before they entered the country.
On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israeli forces would reduce operations in Gaza and shift their attention to northern Israel, intending to secure the area and allow the return of some 60,000 displaced Israelis from border areas. . In Lebanon, approximately 100,000 people have had to flee their homes due to Israeli bombing.
“If we can do it politically, that would be fantastic,” Netanyahu said. “If not, we will do it another way, but we will bring everyone back home, all the residents of the north and the south.”
