The US State Department's counterterrorism coordinator, Nathan Sales, said that since 2012, the Lebanese Hezbollah has established caches to store "ammonium nitrate" throughout Europe, by transporting first aid bags whose cold pockets contain this substance that caused the explosion of the devastated Beirut port.
Sales added, in a speech delivered Thursday via video technology at a meeting of the American Jewish Committee, that Washington believes that these activities are still taking place, noting that what happened in the Beirut port explosion on August 4 reveals that the ammonium nitrate is very dangerous.
The American official did not rule out a link between the explosion and Hezbollah, and the party denied that it had any relationship with storing this material in the port.
According to Sells, caches of ammonium nitrate storage were found in several countries, including the United Kingdom, Greece, France and Italy, and he also talked about transporting this material through Belgium, Spain and Switzerland, noting that the quantities that were seized were destroyed.
The US counterterrorism coordinator said that Washington suspects that storage bunkers of this type existed at least until 2018, "most likely in Greece, Italy and Spain."
For its part, the British Guardian newspaper quoted the American official as saying that Hezbollah was aiming, from storing ammonium nitrate in European countries, to launch attacks.
Sales considered that Hezbollah would launch major attacks when Iran asked him to do so, as he put it.