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Beirut Airport Tour for Reporters Cut Short Amid Hezbollah Weapons Storage Allegations
Lebanon’s Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah addresses his supporters through a screen during a rally commemorating the annual Hezbollah Martyrs’ Day, in Beirut’s southern suburbs. Photo: Reuters/Aziz Taher
An official tour of Beirut’s Rafic Hariri International Airport designed to assuage fears that the facility is being used to store Iranian weapons intended for the Lebanese terrorist organization Hezbollah was cut short as reporters were denied access to a key cargo depot.
The Telegraph, a British newspaper, reported on Sunday that Beirut’s airport is used by Hezbollah — which wields significant political and military influence across Lebanon — to store an enormous number of missiles and other weapons sent from Iran, its chief international backer. An unnamed whistleblower in the report claimed that after Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel, the airport received “unusually large boxes” on flights from Iran.
In response to these allegations, Lebanese Transportation Minister Ali Hamieh — who is affiliated with Hezbollah — denied the report and invited foreign press and observers to tour the airport. “We have nothing to hide,” Hamieh claimed at a press conference before the tour.
According to the Saudi news outlet Al-Hadath, however, reporters invited to tour the airport were not allowed to see its cargo center.
“Beirut airport security prevented journalists from entering the cargo center at the airport,” Al-Hadath journalist Ghinwa Yateem reported after the tour concluded, adding that Lebanese officials “did not let us film or enter certain areas.”
The tour of Beirut’s airport featured a specific cargo facility that “accounts for 20 percent of the import traffic,” according to Hamieh. A video of the warehouse shown on the tour revealed a near-empty warehouse of goods, as Lebanese officials denied The Telegraph‘s reporting. The facility that houses 80 percent of the airport’s imports was not shown to the press and other observers.
A video shows a near-empty cargo depot at Beirut’s Rafic Hariri International Airport. Photo: Screenshot
Flight records from Flightaware — a flight tracking service — show regularly scheduled flights between Iran and Lebanon. Mahan Air flies weekly using widebody A340 planes between Tehran’s Mehrabad International Airport and Beirut’s Rafic Hariri International Airport. In 2020, the US government sanctioned Mahan Air because of the airline’s “long record of ferrying weapons and terrorists around the world for Iran.”
A Mahan Air Airbus A340-300 taxis at Duesseldorf airport in Germany, Jan. 16, 2019. Mahan Air routinely flies an A340-300 from Tehran to Beirut. Photo: Reuters / Wolfgang Rattay.
In Israel’s north, Hezbollah terrorists have been firing rockets at Israel daily from southern Lebanon since Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre, leading Israeli forces to strike back. Tensions have been escalating between both sides, fueling concerns that the conflict in Gaza — the Palestinian enclave ruled by Hamas, another Iran-backed Islamist terrorist group, to Israel’s south — could escalate into a regional conflict.
More than 80,000 Israelis evacuated Israel’s north in October and have since been unable to return to their homes. The majority of those spent the past eight months residing in hotels in safer areas of the country.
Last week, Hezbollah’s Foreign Relations chief Khalil Rizk threatened both Israel and the US in an interview with Lebanon’s Al-Manar and translated by the Middle East Media Research Center (MEMRI). In the interview, Rizk claimed that Jewish “worship instructs him to oppress people, to shed the blood of the Palestinians, and to drive these people out of Palestine.” He also threatened America. “Is this war now with Israel?” he asked. “My answer is that it is not a war with Israel. Israel is merely a tool. The main war, the real war, is with America.”
Allegations of Iran using Rafic Hariri Airport as a weapons depot would not be the first time Iran has allegedly used public infrastructure to transport weapons and support terrorism. During the Syrian civil war, Israel targeted Syrian airports accused of housing Iranian weapons. Last May, for example, Syria’s Aleppo airport was hit by a purported Israeli airstrike after the facility received an arms shipment from an Iranian plane.
Hezbollah routinely stores dangerous weapons and explosive material in public spaces. In 2020, the world’s “largest nonnuclear explosion” shook Beirut when a silo of ammonium nitrate exploded at Beirut’s port. Hezbollah was widely blamed for the explosion, and a formal investigation was launched into the incident.
A general view shows the aftermath at the site of a large blast in Beirut’s port area, Lebanon August 5, 2020. Photo: REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir/File Photo
Rafic Hariri International Airport has seen an uptick in Lebanese and foreign nationals fleeing a potential conflict between Israel and Hezbollah. The airport is Lebanon’s main transportation artery. In 2023, roughly seven million travelers used the airport.
The post Beirut Airport Tour for Reporters Cut Short Amid Hezbollah Weapons Storage Allegations first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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After False Dawns, Gazans Hope Trump Will Force End to Two-Year-Old War
Palestinians walk past a residential building destroyed in previous Israeli strikes, after Hamas agreed to release hostages and accept some other terms in a US plan to end the war, in Nuseirat, central Gaza Strip October 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mahmoud Issa
Exhausted Palestinians in Gaza clung to hopes on Saturday that US President Donald Trump would keep up pressure on Israel to end a two-year-old war that has killed tens of thousands and displaced the entire population of more than two million.
Hamas’ declaration that it was ready to hand over hostages and accept some terms of Trump’s plan to end the conflict while calling for more talks on several key issues was greeted with relief in the enclave, where most homes are now in ruins.
“It’s happy news, it saves those who are still alive,” said 32-year-old Saoud Qarneyta, reacting to Hamas’ response and Trump’s intervention. “This is enough. Houses have been damaged, everything has been damaged, what is left? Nothing.”
GAZAN RESIDENT HOPES ‘WE WILL BE DONE WITH WARS’
Ismail Zayda, 40, a father of three, displaced from a suburb in northern Gaza City where Israel launched a full-scale ground operation last month, said: “We want President Trump to keep pushing for an end to the war, if this chance is lost, it means that Gaza City will be destroyed by Israel and we might not survive.
“Enough, two years of bombardment, death and starvation. Enough,” he told Reuters on a social media chat.
“God willing this will be the last war. We will hopefully be done with the wars,” said 59-year-old Ali Ahmad, speaking in one of the tented camps where most Palestinians now live.
“We urge all sides not to backtrack. Every day of delay costs lives in Gaza, it is not just time wasted, lives get wasted too,” said Tamer Al-Burai, a Gaza City businessman displaced with members of his family in central Gaza Strip.
After two previous ceasefires — one near the start of the war and another earlier this year — lasted only a few weeks, he said; “I am very optimistic this time, maybe Trump’s seeking to be remembered as a man of peace, will bring us real peace this time.”
RESIDENT WORRIES THAT NETANYAHU WILL ‘SABOTAGE’ DEAL
Some voiced hopes of returning to their homes, but the Israeli military issued a fresh warning to Gazans on Saturday to stay out of Gaza City, describing it as a “dangerous combat zone.”
Gazans have faced previous false dawns during the past two years, when Trump and others declared at several points during on-off negotiations between Hamas, Israel and Arab and US mediators that a deal was close, only for war to rage on.
“Will it happen? Can we trust Trump? Maybe we trust Trump, but will Netanyahu abide this time? He has always sabotaged everything and continued the war. I hope he ends it now,” said Aya, 31, who was displaced with her family to Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip.
She added: “Maybe there is a chance the war ends at October 7, two years after it began.”
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Mass Rally in Rome on Fourth Day of Italy’s Pro-Palestinian Protests
A Pro-Palestinian demonstrator waves a Palestinian flag during a national protest for Gaza in Rome, Italy, October 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Claudia Greco
Large crowds assembled in central Rome on Saturday for the fourth straight day of protests in Italy since Israel intercepted an international flotilla trying to deliver aid to Gaza, and detained its activists.
People holding banners and Palestinian flags, chanting “Free Palestine” and other slogans, filed past the Colosseum, taking part in a march that organizers hoped would attract at least 1 million people.
“I’m here with a lot of other friends because I think it is important for us all to mobilize individually,” Francesco Galtieri, a 65-year-old musician from Rome, said. “If we don’t all mobilize, then nothing will change.”
Since Israel started blocking the flotilla late on Wednesday, protests have sprung up across Europe and in other parts of the world, but in Italy they have been a daily occurrence, in multiple cities.
On Friday, unions called a general strike in support of the flotilla, with demonstrations across the country that attracted more than 2 million, according to organizers. The interior ministry estimated attendance at around 400,000.
Italy’s right-wing government has been critical of the protests, with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni suggesting that people would skip work for Gaza just as an excuse for a longer weekend break.
On Saturday, Meloni blamed protesters for insulting graffiti that appeared on a statue of the late Pope John Paul II outside Rome’s main train station, where Pro-Palestinian groups have been holding a protest picket.
“They say they are taking to the streets for peace, but then they insult the memory of a man who was a true defender and builder of peace. A shameful act committed by people blinded by ideology,” she said in a statement.
Israel launched its Gaza offensive after Hamas terrorists staged a cross border attack on October 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 people hostage.
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Hamas Says It Agrees to Release All Israeli Hostages Under Trump Gaza Plan
Smoke rises during an Israeli military operation in Gaza City, as seen from the central Gaza Strip, October 2, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Dawoud Abu Alkas
Hamas said on Friday it had agreed to release all Israeli hostages, alive or dead, under the terms of US President Donald Trump’s Gaza proposal, and signaled readiness to immediately enter mediated negotiations to discuss the details.