Hezbollah slams Netanyahu over arms depot claims in Beirut

HASSAN Nasrallah, the leader of the proIranian Hezbollah, on Tuesday accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of lying about the location of an arms depot and a missile factory in the capital Beirut.

“We will allow the media to enter the facility that Netanyahu talked about so the world finds out he is lying,” Nasrallah said in a televised speech an hour after Netanyahu spoke. He accused the Israeli premier of trying “to incite” the Lebanese against Hezbollah. “We know very well where to put our missiles,” the Hezbollah chief said.

According to Netanyahu, the missile depot located in the Jnah neighborhood was “where the next explosion could take place.”

Lebanon has been pushed to the breaking point by a financial meltdown and a massive August blast at the Port of Beirut that killed nearly 200 people. Authorities have said highly explosive ammonium nitrate detonated after being kept in poor storage for years. Hezbollah has denied any involvement.

“I say to the people of Jnah ... You’ve got to protest this. Because if this thing explodes, it’s another tragedy,” Netanyahu said, speaking in a video to the U.N. General Assembly, prerecorded due to the coronavirus pandemic. A photo displayed by Netanyahu during his speech, purporting to show the entrance to a missile factory, was taken on the ground in Beirut, suggesting an Israeli intelligence asset provided it.

Israel has repeatedly accused the Shiite movement backed by Israel’s archfoe Iran of building missiles to attack the Jewish state. Israel and Hezbollah last fought a war in 2006, and tensions on the IsraelLebanon border have been running high after the Shiite movement said one of its members was killed in an apparent Israeli airstrike in July in Syria.