Foreign diplomats visit Beirut airport after weapons complaints

Senior Lebanese officials defended procedures at Beirut airport on Monday during a tour for journalists and diplomats, a day after a British daily claimed Hezbollah was storing weapons there.

The accusations come amid increasing firefights and bellicose rhetoric between the Lebanese Hezbollah movement and Israeli forces, who have engaged in near-daily shooting since the start of the Gaza war.

Hezbollah has been acting in support of its Palestinian ally, Hamas, since the militant group's attack on Israel on October 7, which sparked the war in Gaza.

On Sunday, the British daily The Telegraph reported that Hezbollah was storing missiles and rockets at Beirut airport, where “whistleblowers” had reported the arrival of “unusually large boxes” from Iran.

Hezbollah has made no official comment.

“The airport meets international standards,” said Transport Minister Ali Hamieh, who led the visit with the Lebanese ministers of Foreign Affairs, Tourism and Information.

Representatives of foreign missions, including Egypt, Germany and the European Union delegation, participated in the tour of the airport warehouses.

Hamieh held a press conference on Sunday to reject the Telegraph article as false and “to say that no weapons are entering or leaving Beirut.” He invited ambassadors and journalists for the tour.

At the airport, Hamieh described the Telegraph report as part of “psychological warfare” against Lebanon and said it was a “distortion of the reputation” of Lebanon's only international airport.

The tour “included an import and export center… which accounts for 20 percent of import traffic and relates to services for Iranian aircraft which were the subject of a Telegraph article”, said Hamieh.

Another warehouse accounted for the remaining 80 percent of imports and exports, he told a news conference.

– 'Lies' –

Israel has for years accused Hezbollah of keeping weapons at facilities across Lebanon, including near Beirut airport, an accusation Hezbollah has denied.

Israel bombed Beirut airport during its last war against Hezbollah in 2006.

Airport director Fadi El-Hassan said all planes arriving at the airport, including Iranian planes, “are subject to the same customs procedures.”

Egyptian Ambassador Alaa Moussa said that although the diplomats were not responsible for inspecting the airport for prohibited items, “our presence (at the tour) is a message of support” to Lebanon and ” a message to all parties that what is needed…is calm.”

The United States, Israel's main ally, said its ambassador did not attend the Beirut airport visit but that Washington had been in contact with Lebanese authorities about the allegations in the article. from the Telegraph.

“We have seen the statement from the Lebanese government that the report is not based on facts. We take these matters extremely seriously and are monitoring them very closely,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said, without giving a U.S. assessment of the report’s accuracy.

More than eight months of cross-border shooting between Hezbollah and Israeli forces have left at least 481 dead in Lebanon, most of them fighters, but also 94 civilians, according to an AFP report.

Israeli authorities say at least 15 soldiers and 11 civilians have been killed in the north of the country.

Rola Qassem, a housewife in her 50s who had just arrived from Ivory Coast to spend the summer in southern Lebanon with her family, said she did not believe reports state of weapons stored at the airport.

“These are lies so that people are afraid to go to Lebanon, to stop tourism,” she told AFP.

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