| Israel charges 8 Arabs with smuggling of explosives |
OCCUPIED JERUSALEM Israel charged eight Arabs on Wednesday with smuggling in explosives from Lebanon on behalf of Hezbollah fighters for the purpose of attacks in the Jewish state, the justice ministry said.
Israel fought an inconclusive 2006 border war with Hezbollah and tensions have risen again lately amid fears of a wider conflict should the Israelis make good on threats to bomb Iran’s disputed nuclear programme. Hezbollah has also sworn to avenge the 2008 assassination in Syria of its military commander, Imad Moughniyeh, which it blamed on the Jewish state.
Israel’s Shin Bet domestic intelligence agency said in a statement that 20kg of explosives and detonators were brought across the Lebanese border into the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights in June by the suspects, most of whom believed the contraband they were handling was drugs.
Shin Bet said the eight Arabs were arrested in July in Ghajar, a Golan town on the border with Lebanon, and in Nazareth, an Arab town in northern Israel. It did not say whether anyone was arrested for organising the alleged plot.
A lawyer representing some of the eight Arabs said on Israeli army radio that they denied the charges. The explosives haul was enough for “a wave of serious terrorist attacks in Israel,” the Shin Bet said, noting that 3kg of explosives were used in a July 18 bombing at an airport in Bulgaria that killed five Israeli tourists.
Reuters
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