Hezbollah has stepped up its weapons smuggling operations across the Lebanese-Syrian border in recent weeks, seeking to recover stockpiles it abandoned after the collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s rule, Syrian security sources said.

The sources told Erem News that networks working for the militant group are moving light and medium weapons out of secret caches it once controlled inside Syria. They said Damascus has launched a sweeping security plan to tighten control along the border, deploying additional army and security units to sensitive points and introducing advanced monitoring and reconnaissance systems.

A Syrian security source familiar with the campaign said the Interior Ministry, in coordination with the Defense Ministry and intelligence services, is waging a broad crackdown to shut down smuggling routes stretching along the frontier with Lebanon. The goal, he said, is to dismantle the remnants of networks Hezbollah used during the war.

Syrian authorities are attempting to close as many smuggling hubs as possible, while Hezbollah has increasingly turned to difficult mountain terrain and revived older smuggling routes, the source said.

He added that security forces had foiled more than 13 weapons-smuggling attempts over the past two months. Dozens of Syrian and some Lebanese traffickers were arrested in coordination with Beirut’s official authorities. The seizures included short-range missiles, rocket-propelled grenades, medium and heavy machine guns, Kornet anti-tank missiles, improvised explosive devices and rudimentary reconnaissance drones.

According to the source, current smuggling routes run through three main regions: Al-Qusayr, which borders Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley in the east; the western Qalamoun mountains, including Qara, Yabroud and Ras al-Maara; and the areas of Zabadani, Madaya and the southern Damascus countryside.

These are the same rugged mountain tracks once used to move fighters, weapons and drugs, but which have now been revived under the control of more organized networks directly linked to Hezbollah’s leadership, he said.

Hezbollah also relies on local smugglers who know the terrain intimately, blending in with others who move food and fuel across the border, many of them residents of border villages on both sides. This overlap, the source noted, makes it harder for authorities to combat multiple smuggling operations at the same time.

The security source said Hezbollah’s renewed smuggling push aims to recover weapons it left behind after its withdrawal from key Syrian battlefronts. The group pulled out of strategic positions in Al-Qusayr, Qalamoun, rural Damascus and rural Aleppo following Assad’s fall, but the retreat was not fully organized.

Reports indicate the group left behind caches of light and medium weapons, some hidden underground or in hard-to-reach mountain areas.

Analysts say those depots have since become targets for local smuggling gangs, some linked to former regime security operatives who now function as “shadow networks.” These groups, they say, are coordinating with Hezbollah field units to retrieve the abandoned arms and move them back into Lebanon.