Three people were arrested in Argentina on Tuesday under the suspicion they were preparing a terrorist attack in the country. "The arrival of a potential terrorist cell in the country was neutralized," Security Ministry officials said about the actions.
Among the suspects was a Syrian man who had passports from Venezuela and Colombia. The other two are from Syria and Lebanon. All allegedly gathered in the city of Buenos Aires with the purpose of planning an attack.
The operation also included the tracking of a 35-kilogram package sent from Yemen to Argentina. This also led to the arrest of two other people, one in Buenos Aires and another one in the neighboring city of Avellaneda.
The arrests were conducted as the Pan-American Maccabi games are taking place in Buenos Aires.
Some months ago, an Iraqi man with allegedly counterfeit Argentine documentation was arrested as he was speaking on his phone across the Israeli embassy in the country. The event took place as tensions in the Middle East flared amid the Israel-Hamas war.
[AHORA] Estos son los presuntos terroristas detenidos: se hospedaban a dos cuadras de la embajada de Israel. https://t.co/nqjOiIRO84 pic.twitter.com/vtXL6bj9a9
— ElCanciller.com (@elcancillercom) January 3, 2024
Israeli and Jewish people have already been targeted in Argentina, most notably with the Israeli Embassy and the AMIA Jewish community center bombings in 1992 and 1994, respectively, in which over 100 people died as a result of the combination of the two attacks.
In mid November, Brazilian authorities arrested three people suspected of having ties with Hezbollah, the militant group that mainly operates in Lebanon. They were accused of being in the middle of preparations to perpetrate attacks against the Jewish community in Brazil.
Brazil's Israeli Confederation issued a press release following the arrests stating its "huge concern" for the potential attacks: "Terrorism in all of its aspects must be fought against and repudiated by all Brazilian society," the organization said. "The tragic events in the Middle East cannot be imported to our country, in which communities live peacefully and without fear of terrorism," it added.
Analysts have long documented activities related to Hezbollah in the area known as the Triple Border, which separates Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay. According to the Buenos Aires Times, the place has "on multiple occasions been a hideout for terrorists who, for instance, once attacked Jewish targets in Buenos Aires."
The outlet added that controls and reports by the countries' main spying agencies with interests in the region have been heightened after the beginning of the war.
On June 15, 2023, Argentine news outlet Infobae reported that three of the four members of Hezbollah allegedly responsible for two terrorist attacks against the Jewish community in Argentina in the 1990s were living in Ciudad del Este, Paraguay and Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil. Lately, the outlet said, operatives from the group, as well as others from Hamas, "have joined drug dealing clans to fund their attack missions in Israel and targets in the rest of the world."
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