Nasrallah denies Netanyahu’s claim Hezbollah is making weapons in Beirut

In a prescheduled address, Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah briefly deviates from the main subject of his speech to deny Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu‘s claim that Hezbollah had placed a stockpile of rockets close to a gas station in Beirut.

Netanyahu made the allegations during a speech to the United Nations General Assembly earlier this evening.

“This is incitement of the Lebanese people against Hezbollah,” Nasrallah says.

“If there [were] missiles there placed by Hezbollah — even a single weapon — I would not waste a minute before informing you of this matter,” Nasrallah says, adding “we don’t put rockets, not in the Beirut port, not by a gas station. We know very well where to put our weapons.”

On August 4, a pile of explosive ammonium nitrate in the Beirut port suddenly detonated, killing over 180 and rendering 300,000 Beirut residents homeless.

Hezbollah has denied any connection to the explosion; the owners of the material remain unknown.

Last week, what was reported to be a Hezbollah weapons stockpile blew up in Ein Qana. While the terror group has denied any casualties, it released a statement a few days later mourning a senior commander in the Lebanese terror group killed “while performing his duty.”

The senior officer, Ali Najib Marwa, is rumored to have been killed in the explosion, which Hezbollah has deemed “a technical error.”

— Aaron Boxerman