---
title: "Lebanon seizes 780kg of Hezbollah explosives, and no one agrees why"
description: "The group says the TNT and C-4 were bound for Israel; the state’s own numbers only account for 500 of the 780 kilos"
author: "Luis Goa"
published: 2026-10-16T16:09:43Z
modified: 2026-10-16T17:38:45Z
url: https://rews.cc/a/lebanon-seizes-780kg-of-hezbollah-explosives-and-no-one-agre-3a3a8d
language: en
tags: ["hezbollah", "lebanon", "security", "war", "iran", "mideast"]
publisher: "Rews (https://rews.cc)"
---

# Lebanon seizes 780kg of Hezbollah explosives, and no one agrees why

*The group says the TNT and C-4 were bound for Israel; the state’s own numbers only account for 500 of the 780 kilos*

By Luis Goa · October 16, 2026 · https://rews.cc/a/lebanon-seizes-780kg-of-hezbollah-explosives-and-no-one-agre-3a3a8d

## In brief

- Lebanese forces seized 780kg of explosives, including 250kg TNT and 250kg C-4, at a checkpoint on Oct 5
- Two detained men said they were couriering the load from Baalbek to Beirut for a man known as “Zulfiqar”
- Hezbollah MP Hassan Fadlallah confirmed ownership, saying the explosives were meant for use against Israel
- Reuters sources said the material may have been destined for explosive-laden drones targeting Israeli troops
- PM Nawaf Salam and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio both pushed back on returning the explosives to Hezbollah

On October 5, a minivan was stopped at a checkpoint in Dahr el-Baydar, the pass on the Beirut–Damascus highway where the road out of the Bekaa Valley climbs into Mount Lebanon. Lebanese security forces searched it and found 780 kilograms (1,720 pounds) of explosive material, 250 kilograms of TNT and 250 kilograms of C-4 plastic explosive, according to judicial officials who spoke to the Associated Press and [Al Jazeera](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/10/16/division-in-lebanon-over-hezbollahs-confiscated-explosives). Add up the two figures the state has given and you get 500 kilograms. Nobody in the official account has explained what made up the remaining 280.

TNT and C-4 are the two explosives any army or insurgent group keeps in supply: TNT because it is cheap and stable, C-4 because it is malleable enough to be shaped into a specific charge and detonated with precision. Half a ton of either is enough to flatten a building; 500 kilograms of the two combined is roughly what was used in the 2005 truck bomb that killed former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri and 21 others, a comparison Prime Minister Nawaf Salam made explicitly, saying C-4 had featured in “infamous political assassinations in Lebanon’s modern history,” according to [Reuters](https://www.timesofisrael.com/hezbollah-claims-confiscated-truck-of-explosives-but-denies-assassination-plans/) and other outlets reporting his remarks.

**The seized shipment's declared route** According to the two detained men's statements to Lebanese judicial officials

| From | To | How |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Baalbek, Bekaa Valley *(explosives loaded, origin undisclosed to couriers)* | Dahr el-Baydar checkpoint *(vehicle stopped, Oct 5)* | minivan |
| Dahr el-Baydar checkpoint *(vehicle stopped, Oct 5)* | Beirut southern suburbs *(intended delivery)* | seized here |
| Beirut southern suburbs *(intended delivery)* | "Zulfiqar" *(recipient known only by nom de guerre)* | planned handover |

![The seized shipment's declared route. According to the two detained men's statements to Lebanese judicial officials](https://rews.cc/img/b0c80e6193f85fd363ed59d6390bde7565c32a0d.webp)

Based on [Judicial officials, via Associated Press and Al Jazeera](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/10/16/division-in-lebanon-over-hezbollahs-confiscated-explosives)

The two men in the minivan told investigators they had been ordered to carry the material from Baalbek to Beirut without being told what it was for, and to hand it to a man identified only by the nom de guerre Zulfiqar, a judicial source told AFP. A judicial source also said one of the two detainees is the son of a Hezbollah official and the other is a Hezbollah member, though neither man nor the official has been named, as reported by [Naharnet](https://www.naharnet.com/stories/en/323040-son-of-hezbollah-official-is-one-of-two-held-over-dahr-al-baidar-explosives). Lebanese outlet Al-Hadath reported the two suspects told interrogators they had received the shipment from a Hezbollah commander in Baalbek going by Sayyed Sajeed, and that the explosives contained nails and metal balls, a shrapnel mix associated with anti-personnel charges rather than a bomb meant for a single large structure.

Hezbollah did not deny ownership for long. MP Hassan Fadlallah, speaking for the group’s parliamentary bloc, confirmed the vehicle and its cargo belonged to Hezbollah and said the explosives were “intended exclusively for use against the Israeli occupation” in southern Lebanon, calling assassination allegations “baseless.” He demanded the shipment and the two men be returned, and described the Lebanese government’s March decision outlawing Hezbollah’s military activity as “null and void.” Separately, a Hezbollah representative and a Lebanese security official told Reuters the explosives were meant for explosive-laden drones aimed at Israeli troops; Reuters also reported it remains unclear whether the metal fragments were destined for the fiber-optic drones Hezbollah has been flying against Israeli forces occupying parts of southern Lebanon, a weapon that trades satellite guidance for a wire the length of the strike and so can’t be jammed.

![A collage shows an open delivery van carrying boxes, with a looping black cord leading to a flying drone against a textured teal background and orange circle.](https://rews.cc/img/df7cd22df72d0099b50421450221c9fb86ee1c6e.webp)

None of that explains why a Hezbollah shipment, run by a Hezbollah member and a Hezbollah official’s son, out of Baalbek, needed to pass through a state checkpoint on the Beirut highway at all. Beirut-based analyst Issam Kayssi, of the Carnegie Middle East Center, and retired Lebanese Army brigadier general Marcel Baloukji, formerly head of the army’s committee on the Syrian border, told Al Jazeera that the simplest reading of the stop is that whoever sent the minivan expected it to pass unchecked. If that is right, it says less about this one shipment than about how many earlier ones moved through the same checkpoints undetected.

## A disarmament deal nobody is keeping

The seizure lands inside a specific legal dispute. In March 2026, Hezbollah fired rockets at northern Israel, two days after Israel and the United States struck Iran, Hezbollah’s main backer; hours later, Salam’s government declared all Hezbollah military activity illegal. The war that followed has killed nearly 4,000 people in Lebanon, by the account cited in [Al Jazeera’s reporting](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/10/16/division-in-lebanon-over-hezbollahs-confiscated-explosives), and left Israeli forces occupying parts of the south as a declared security zone. In June, Beirut and Tel Aviv signed a US-administered trilateral framework under which Israel would withdraw in phases as the Lebanese Army disarmed Hezbollah. Hezbollah has not disarmed, arguing it will not do so while Israeli troops remain on Lebanese soil; Israel has continued strikes in the south, citing Hezbollah violations of the same deal. Lebanon’s attempt to clear Hezbollah weapons depots in the south, under way through 2025, was paused when the March war began. Hezbollah’s own supply line for weapons and financing through Syria was cut after the fall of the Assad government in late 2024, a loss [previously documented](https://rews.cc/a/three-years-after-october-8-hezbollah-counts-its-losses-and--edf1e9); Syria’s new authorities have since reported seizing further weapons shipments bound for Hezbollah at the border.

![A collage shows a rifle beside a large weathered padlock, a small green cedar tree, and a broken concrete wall against a blue background.](https://rews.cc/img/2db5f84dd215616117b793e591e209d9849ff3f3.webp)

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio called Lebanese President Joseph Aoun about the seizure and urged him to hold accountable whoever “ordered, financed and directed” the shipment; a State Department official said Rubio told Aoun that returning the explosives to Hezbollah “should be out of the question,” according to [Reuters](https://www.timesofisrael.com/hezbollah-claims-confiscated-truck-of-explosives-but-denies-assassination-plans/). Salam has said the government “will not be lenient” and that investigators will pursue “all those involved in this criminal operation, and those behind them”; Justice Minister Adel Nassar said on social media the investigation “will continue to the very end.” None of the three men so far publicly tied to the shipment, including the unnamed Hezbollah official whose son was detained, has been named by the state.

Lebanon’s modern history gives the fear of assassination a specific shape, not a vague one. Hariri’s 2005 killing opened a four-year run of car-bomb and gun assassinations of Hezbollah’s political opponents and allied journalists, a period Lebanese politician Amine Gemayel invoked directly, writing that the seized explosives were “most likely” meant “to fuel a wave of assassinations like the one between 2004 and 2008.” Hezbollah has never admitted to any of those killings despite repeated accusations, including over Hariri’s. Kayssi noted that the current moment resembles an earlier one: “We are more than a year on from the Raouche incident,” he told Al Jazeera, referring to a 2025 episode in which Hezbollah projected images of its slain leaders Hassan Nasrallah and Hashem Safieddine onto Beirut’s seafront despite a state ban, a small act of defiance that nonetheless went unpunished.

What gets tested next is not whether Hezbollah owns the 780 kilograms, which it has conceded, but whether the Lebanese state can establish who Zulfiqar is, where the other 280 kilograms of material went in the official arithmetic, and whether the checkpoint that caught this shipment is catching a representative sample or an unlucky one.

## See also

- [Associated Press report on the seizure](https://www.wral.com/news/ap/afd96-hezbollah-claims-confiscated-explosives-and-denies-assassination-plans/) — wral.com · AP's account of the 780kg seizure and Hezbollah's denial of assassination plans
- [Naharnet: Salam vows to punish those behind the shipment](https://www.naharnet.com/stories/en/323048-salam-vows-to-punish-those-behind-dahr-al-baidar-smuggled-explosives) — naharnet.com · PM Salam's direct quotes on the investigation