Lebanon helped foil bomb attack on Australia-UAE flight

Lebanon helped foil an alleged Islamic State-inspired plot to blow up a plane travelling from Australia to the United Arab Emirates this month, its interior minister said on Monday.Nohad Machnouk said the men who had planned to carry out the bombing of a flight from Australia to Abu Dhabi had been under Lebanese police surveillance."The plane had 120 Lebanese on board in addition to other nationalities," Machnouk told a news conference in Beirut broadcast on Saudi-owned television station Al-Arabiya Al-Hadath.Earlier this month an Australian man was detained in Sydney during raids to disrupt what authorities described as an Islamic State-inspired plot to bomb an Etihad Airways flight.The man was one of four detained during raids by counter-terrorism police in suburbs in Sydney.Police allege one of the four sent his unsuspecting brother to catch an Etihad Airways flight from Sydney on July 15 carrying a home-made bomb disguised as a meat mincer built on the instructions of a commander in the militant Islamic State group.