The Lebanese army said on Tuesday it has caught 10 terrorists, including their Syrian ringleader, who were planning to attack United Nations Interim Forces (UNIFIL) forces in southern Lebanon. The Syrian possessed six forged passports and traveled to six different Arab countries in 15 days, a security source told Reuters.
The terrorist cell was sheltered in a Christian area east of Beirut prior to its planned execution of a suicide attacks inside and outside Lebanon.
One of the plans of the cell, which is part of the Fatah-al-Islam terrorist gang that is guided by the ideology of Al Qaeda, was to help terrorists escape a village where they have been staying. The Fatah al-Islam group has been involved in intense clashes with the Lebanese army, which lost 170 soldiers while killing more than 200 members of the terrorist group.
An army communiqué stated, "Our investigation has shown that this network was planning…to carry out attacks from Lebanon on targets abroad and create terrorist cells to monitor UNIFIL and the army in order to carry out terrorist attacks on them.”
It said that most of the 10 terrorists were from outside Lebanon. The French news agency AFP reported that several of those arrested camouflaged their activities by working for private companies in Lebanon
The arrest came less than a week after several UNIFIL soldiers were wounded by stone-throwing protestors, who blocked their attempt to investigate a huge explosion of what was considered an Hizbullah training post or weapons warehouse.
IDF photos showed that the roof of the building that was being used by Hizbullah was pocketed with holes the size of Katyusha rocket shells. The Israeli Foreign Ministry said the explosion is further proof of Hizbullah violations of the United Nations ceasefire resolution that ended the 34-day Second Lebanon War, which broke out three years ago this month.