Hizbullah silent over report that group got chemical weapons
Hizbullah refused to respond on Thursday to a report in Kuwaiti daily Al-Seyasseh alleging the group had recently acquired chemical weapons from Iran. “Who reads that paper anyway?” a source close to Hizbullah told The Daily Star on Thursday. The Kuwaiti daily Al-Seyasseh, quoting “western and European” intelligence sources, reported that Iran had provided Hizbullah with “thousands of gas masks used in chemical and biological warfare” as well as new chemical arms.
The weapons were flown from Iran and stopped at Syrian airports before being transferred over land to locations in the Bekaa Valley and surrounding the Litani River, the paper reported.
Israel has long held that the Shiite group has been receiving weapons capable of hitting Tel Aviv from benefactors in Syria and Iran, which would constitute a violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which put an end to the summer 2006 war with the Zionist state.
In a further allegation, the paper suggested that the explosion of a suspected Hizbullah arms cache near Khirbet Silim in July took place at a location that housed chemical weapons.
“Hizbullah was storing chemical weapons in its underground arms depot,” the paper read, adding that three of the group’s members died in hospitals in Tyre and Nabatieh following chemical contamination at the blast site.
Although sources for this information were not identified in the report, they were said to be “intelligence sources in Europe” who acted in conjunction with UNIFIL.
UNIFIL is currently carrying out its investigation into the blast site in conjunction with the Lebanese Army and the paper reported that the peacekeeping force had found evidence of chemical residue in soil samples surrounding the depot.
Also on Thursday, Israeli media reported that its army was regularly conducting military exercises to prepare its response to any attack from Hizbullah.
The daily Yedioth Ahronoth carried a dispatch from close to the Blue Line, in which soldiers reportedly simulated “intense warfare” with Hizbullah fighters. The report also alleged that the Israeli Army is on full alert and prepared for any deterioration in fragile Blue Line security which “could be broken at any moment.”
The report suggested that the Israeli Army is continuing its surveillance on the Lebanese side of the Blue line which, if true, would also constitute a violation of the recently renewed Resolution 1701.