Damascus Says One Killed, Four Arrested During Seizure of Landmines Bound for Lebanon

Erbil (Kurdistan 24) – Syria’s Interior Ministry announced on Wednesday that one person was killed and four others were arrested during an operation to foil the smuggling of a large cache of military landmines allegedly destined for Lebanon. The ministry detailed the operation in a statement released on its official account on X.

According to the ministry, the raid took place in the al-Jabba area of northern rural Damascus following “precise investigations and continuous monitoring,” which enabled security units to track the movements of a suspected group. The operation culminated in a raid that resulted in the arrest of four individuals and the “neutralization” of a fifth suspect, a term used to indicate his death during an exchange with the patrols.

Khaled Abbas Taktouk, Director of Internal Security in the border town of Yabroud, reported that specialized units seized 1,250 military landmines equipped with fuses, stored inside “one of the sites in al-Jabba” in the Damascus countryside.

The ministry said the confiscated explosives were prepared for smuggling to Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Images released by the Interior Ministry showed dozens of wooden crates and bags said to be filled with landmines, along with hundreds of mines stacked in an open courtyard inside a building.

The Syrian–Lebanese border, which stretches for more than 300 kilometers, is notorious for the activity of smuggling networks operating through rugged mountain terrain, especially in Qalamoun, al-Zabadani, and the countryside of Homs. These networks are involved in smuggling drugs, fuel, and weapons, taking advantage of the region’s geography and the difficulty of controlling unregulated crossings.

Israel, which has intensified its strikes on Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, says the Iran-backed group is attempting to rearm.

On September 11, Syria announced it had dismantled a network near Damascus linked to Hezbollah, which the group denied, insisting it had “no presence” on Syrian soil.

In 2013, Hezbollah formally declared its intervention in support of Bashar al-Assad, fighting alongside Syrian government forces in the conflict that erupted in 2011 after the government cracked down on anti-regime protests.

Since Assad’s overthrow, the new authorities under Interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa have repeatedly announced efforts to secure the border, leading to several skirmishes. Yet smuggling persists, and neighboring states continue to report large seizures of Captagon tablets.