Lebanese minister warns Israel may target Beirut airport

Lebanese authorities say there is no guarantee that the Israeli regime would not target the country’s only international airport in Beirut as the regime goes on with its airstrikes against areas in the south of the capital city where the Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah holds sway.

Lebanon’s Minister of Public Works and Transport Ali Hamieh said in remarks published on Tuesday that Israel may launch attacks on Beirut’s Rafik Hariri International Airport under the pretext that the facility is used by Hezbollah to smuggle weapons.

Hamieh told the AFP news agency that Lebanese authorities had not received any concrete guarantee from Western governments, including Israel’s main ally the United States, that the airport in Beirut will not be targeted in Israeli airstrikes.

Israel has repeatedly struck near the airport since September 23 when it began its intense attacks on Beirut's southern suburbs.

The US asked Israel on Monday not to attack the Beirut airport or the roads leading to it.

However, Hamieh said such calls are far from guarantees that would spare the airport from Israeli strikes.

“... there is a big difference between assurances and guarantees,” he said, as he rejected Israeli accusations that Hezbollah was using the Beirut airport and Lebanon’s border crossings to smuggle weapons.

The minister said the airport is subject to strict checks and controls by related authorities, adding that the Lebanese army should approve any military aircraft or plane carrying weapons into the facility.

More than 1,000 people have been killed in Israeli attacks on Lebanon in the past two weeks while the attacks have displaced around one million people, including some 400,000 who have fled to neighboring Syria.

Hezbollah has been fighting Israel since October 8 last year, a day after the regime launched a brutal aggression against the Palestinian territory of Gaza.

The Lebanese resistance has indicated that its firing of rockets at Israeli targets will stop only once the regime completely ends its invasion of Gaza.

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