Lebanon detains Palestinian suspected of mass poisoning plots

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Lebanon’s security forces said Thursday they had detained a descendant of Palestinian refugees allegedly linked to the Islamic State terror group over two poisoning plots, one of Lebanese army water and another of food in a foreign country.

The man, born in 1991, admitted to links with an IS member in Syria “who tasked him with making explosives and concocting poison,” the General Security force said in a statement.

He prepared to “concoct a quantity of deadly poison along with someone living in a foreign country” for two planned poisonings.

The first was to “poison one of the water tanks from which the Lebanese army’s trucks fill up on water every day to take it to the army barracks.”

The second was to “carry out a mass poisoning in a foreign country” through “poisoning food during a public holiday,” the statement said, without specifying the location.

The Palestinian has been referred to the relevant judicial authority, the security forces said, and the authorities are looking for other people involved.

In this file photo taken on April 30, 2017, a member of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces removes an Islamic State flag in the town of Tabqa, about 55 kilometers (35 miles) west of the jihadists then de facto capital of Raqqa. (AFP Photo/Delil Souleiman)

Lebanon has been heavily impacted by the civil war in neighboring Syria since it erupted in March 2011.

Security forces have on several occasions arrested suspected IS members.

They are usually tried by military courts, but their trials have dragged on due to the amount of cases.

Lebanon has been rocked by several suicide bombings since 2013, some of them claimed by IS.

The extremist group in August last year evacuated a Lebanese-Syrian border region under an unprecedented deal to end three years of jihadist presence there.

Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.