Lebanese Army arrests Syrian trying to smuggle rockets into Lebanon

The Lebanese Army announced Wednesday that it arrested a Syrian national at the Lebanese-Syrian border, near the villages of Aiha and Rashaya in the Bekaa, who was transporting "a quantity of rockets" that he "attempted to clandestinely smuggle ... into Lebanese territory." The army did not provide further details, and Syrian authorities have not yet commented.

The Lebanese Army also announced, in the same statement, that it arrested "10 Syrian nationals involved in an altercation inside one of the area’s camps" in Shaath (northern Bekaa). The confiscated materials were handed over to the competent authorities and an investigation has been opened.

One of the main missions of the Lebanese Army is currently to combat smuggling along the roughly 330-kilometer border with Syria. Its presence there has been reinforced since the fall of Bashar Assad’s regime on Dec. 8, 2024, in an effort to address problems stemming from the porosity of that border, as part of the fight against smuggling and trafficking of all kinds. Since then, the army and the Internal Security Forces (ISF) have regularly announced arms seizures and the arrest of smugglers.

The fall of the Assad regime in Syria in favor of an Islamist coalition hostile to Hezbollah, with which the Lebanese state now cooperates, has largely deprived the pro-Iranian group of a key overland route for the transport of its weapons.