Lebanese army seizes weapons and ammunition in Hezbollah bastion

O lebanon's army today conducted a search operation in an arms warehouse in the southern suburbs of Beirut, a bastion of the Shia group Hezbollah, and seized a large amount of weapons and ammunition, Lebanese forces reported.

This operation takes place after the arrest, on October 8, of two men carrying 500 kilos of explosives in an eastern Lebanon truck bound for Beirut.

Hezbollah recognized that the cargo belonged to them.

At the end of October, the Lebanese authorities initiated proceedings against 13 persons in this case, a judicial source told France Presse (AFP).

In a statement, the army described today’s operation as “directed” and carried out after “a rigorous surveillance of arms transport and trafficking activities”.

The Lebanese military specified that the operation was carried out in a “weapons warehouse in the Moucharrafieh area in the southern suburbs of Beirut”.

During the searches, “a significant amount of weapons and ammunition” was found and a person was detained, who is now under judicial investigation.

The army didn't specify who the armory belonged to.

The southern suburbs of Beirut are a bastion of Hezbollah, a group supported by Iran and which maintained several periods of conflict with Israel, the last of which between 2023 and 2024, in solidarity with its Palestinian ally Hamas in the Gaza Strip war, and this year with Tehran, following the Israeli-American offensive against the Islamic Republic.

Hezbollah's areas of influence in Lebanon were largely destroyed in vast Israeli air campaigns, which in September 2024 killed its historical leader, Hassan Nasrallah, in the district of Dahieh, on the southern outskirts of Beirut.

A ceasefire was reached in November 2024, but after the start of the war against Iran on 28 February, and further attacks by Hezbollah, Israel returned to its intensive bombings in Lebanon and expanded the occupation of areas in the south of the country it had already maintained since the previous conflict.

The Lebanese Government has now adopted a plan to disarm the militias of the Lebanese group, which in the meantime refuses to voluntarily surrender their weapons as long as the threat of Israel persists.

Following the resumption of hostilities between Israeli forces and Hezbollah on March 2, Israel and Lebanon’s authorities, countries without diplomatic relations, initiated direct peace negotiations under mediation from the United States, which culminated in a framework agreement in June.

The agreement provides for the disarmament of Hezbollah and the gradual withdrawal of Israeli forces from the vast occupied areas in southern Lebanon, where the Lebanese army will be positioned.

Hezbollah, the only Lebanese group that kept their weapons after the end of the civil war (1975-1990) in the name of the “resistance” to Israel, however, insists on refusing its disarmament and does not recognize direct negotiations with the authorities of Tel Aviv.

Iran's support for armed groups in the Middle East, including Hezbollah alongside other movements such as Hamas in Palestine, Huthis in Yemen or Shia militias in Iraq, is one of the central points in the negotiations between Washington and Tehran to end the conflict in the Gulf region.