BEIRUT: A parcel addressed to the Israeli Foreign Ministry arrived “accidentally” at Beirut's international airport Wednesday, causing panic among customs authorities, a security source told The Daily Star.
The source said a Cyprus Airways airliner arrived at Rafik Hariri International Airport before midday Wednesday with a parcel sent from the Israeli Embassy in Larnaka to Israel’s Foreign Ministry in Tel Aviv.
He said the office of the military prosecutor ordered customs authorities to confiscate the package and hand it over to the office.
When an employee at the Cypriot Embassy in Lebanon arrived at the airport to pick up the parcel, customs authorities refused to hand him the package, the source said.
“This matter does not concern the embassy,” Cypriot Ambassador Homer Mavrommatis told The Daily Star when contacted by telephone.
The embassy’s press office also denied that an embassy staffer had gone to the airport to pick up the parcel.
Lebanon and Israel are technically in a state of war.