Beirut bomb attack (archive)
Beirut bomb attack (archive)Reuters

Lebanese authorities have detained two Lebanese employees of a Beirut airport service company over contacts with "terrorist parties", security sources said on Sunday, according to Reuters.

Public Works and Transport Minister Ghazi Zeaiter said last month that Beirut airport needed at least $24 million to address pressing gaps in security, including a new perimeter wall and baggage inspection equipment.

Interior Minister Nohad Machnouk has said safety procedures at the airport are inadequate, comparing it to Egypt's Sharm el-Sheikh airport, where a bomb planted on a Russian plane killed 224 people in October.

No details were provided about which terrorist parties the two employees had been in contact with, but Lebanon has suffered from a spillover of the civil war in neighboring Syria.

The Islamic State (ISIS) group and the Al-Qaeda-linked Al-Nusra Front have both mounted suicide bomb attacks in Lebanon since the eruption of the Syrian conflict in 2011.

Al-Nusra also joined an incursion into the Lebanese border town of Arsal in 2013 and its fighters captured several Lebanese soldiers when they pulled out.

The Lebanon-based Hezbollah is fighting alongside President Bashar Al-Assad in the Syrian war, where it has suffered many casualties.

As part of the spillover, Hezbollah's strongholds have come under repeated bomb attacks over its involvement in the Syrian conflict.