4 Syrians Held, Arms Seized in Wata el-Msaitbeh as Detainee Referred to Judiciary

The army arrested four Syrians and seized a cache of arms and ammunition overnight in the Beirut area of Wata el-Msaitbeh, amid a security crackdown in the country following the deadly Bourj al-Barajneh blasts.

“An army force raided overnight a building in the Wata el-Msaitbeh area containing a number of suspicious individuals where it arrested the Syrians Omar Hamad al-Hussein, Hussein Saray al-Hussein, Abboud Hamad al-Mohammed al-Abed and Hammoud Hamad al-Mohammed al-Abed,” the army said in a statement issued Monday.

The raiding force seized “an RPG rocket launcher, a Kalashnikov, a quantity of RPGs and various ammunition, a number of binoculars and communication devices, and various military gear.”

Earlier in the day, the army said its Intelligence Directorate had referred to the judiciary a detained suspect facing multiple terror charges.

“The detained terrorist Mohammed Abdo Taleb was referred to the relevant judicial authorities for belonging to a terrorist group and fighting alongside it in Syria,” it said.

Upon his return to Lebanon, the man started plotting “terrorist operations in Tripoli along with an armed group before vanishing with the arrest of most of the group's members,” the statement added.

He then joined the group led by Alaa Kanaan, “whose name was mentioned in the case of the Le Duroy Hotel” suicide bombing, the army said.

Taleb later hid a number of suicide vests of which two were seized, and “efforts are underway to locate the other explosive belts,” it added.

The man is also accused of “offering refuge to terrorists from the group led by the terrorist Nabil Skaff, including the fugitive Jawhar Morjan.”

“Along with other individuals, he took part in an attack on security forces in (Akkar's) Fnaydeq after a member of the group was arrested by the Intelligence Directorate,” the army said.

“He later plotted, along with others and following the arrest of Ahmed Salim Miqati, to attack an army post in the al-Sadaqa area near Fnaydeq,” it added.

Nine Syrians and two Lebanese suspects were arrested Sunday in several Lebanese regions in connection with Thursday's deadly suicide bombings in the Beirut southern suburb of Bourj al-Barajneh.

The blasts, which were staged by two Islamic State suicide bombers, killed 43 people and wounded around 240 others, in the worst such attacks in years.

On Sunday, Interior Minister Nouhad al-Mashnouq announced that "the whole suicide bombing network and its supporters were arrested in the 48 hours following the explosion," calling the arrests "an extraordinary achievement."

"The detained include seven Syrians and two Lebanese, one of them a (would-be) suicide bomber and the other a trafficker who smuggled them across the border from Syria," Mashnouq said.

He said the Syrians were detained in a Palestinian refugee camp located in Bourj al-Barajneh and a flat in the capital's eastern district of Ashrafieh that had been used to prepare the explosive belts.

Security forces arrested the Lebanese would-be suicide attacker in the northern port city of Tripoli after he had failed to detonate his suicide belt, Mashnouq said.

The initial plan was apparently to send five suicide bombers to the Hizbullah-owned Great Prophet Hospital near the targeted Bourj al-Barajneh area, he said, but heavy security forced them to change the target to a densely populated area.

Y.R.