Brazilian federal police have arrested two men with suspected links to the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah who were reportedly plotting to launch terror attacks against the Jewish community in Brazil. The arrests were made on Wednesday during an operation to disrupt preparations for acts of terrorism and obtain evidence about the possible recruitment of Brazilians to commit extremist acts. Media reports said one man had been arrested at Brazil’s biggest international airport, in Guarulhos, São Paulo, after flying in from Lebanon.

Investigators believed the group was planning to launch attacks on buildings belonging to Brazil’s Jewish community, including synagogues. The office of Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, thanked Brazilian security services for the arrest of a terrorist cell operated by Hezbollah in order to carry out an attack on Israeli and Jewish targets in Brazil. Netanyahu’s office indicated that Israel’s intelligence agency, Mossad, and other foreign security agencies had played a role in the operation, which had foiled a terrorist attack planned by the Hezbollah terrorist organization, directed and financed by Iran.

Brazil is home to Latin America’s second-largest Jewish community and a 17th-century synagogue said to be the first built in the Americas. Multiple reports said the arrested men had links to Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based Islamist militia group. Hezbollah is both a powerful political movement and a militant group with a global footprint, including in South America. Past acts of terror attributed to Hezbollah include suicide attacks on US and French troops and the US embassy in Lebanon in 1983, as well as bombings in Argentina in 1992 and 1994. Latin America is home to several large Jewish communities, with the biggest in Argentina. Brazil has around 107,000 Jews, the second-biggest Jewish community in Latin America. The arrests come just over a month after the start of the Israel-Hamas conflict in Gaza.