Brazilian Justice Minister Flavio Dino delivered a stiff rebuke to Israel after its Mossad spy agency said it had helped foil an attack by the militant group Hezbollah on Jewish targets in Brazil, Reuters reports.

Dino was responding to a highly unusual statement in which Israel’s Mossad agency thanked Brazilian police and said that, “given the backdrop of the war in Gaza”, Hezbollah was continuing to attack Israeli, Jewish and Western targets.

Earlier on Wednesday, Brazil’s Federal Police arrested two unnamed people on terrorism charges, and carried out 11 search and seizure warrants on properties.

Without explicitly naming Israel, Dino said on X, formerly known as Twitter, that “Brazil is a sovereign country,” and “no foreign force orders around the Brazilian Federal Police.”

Dino said the investigations that resulted in Wednesday’s operations “began before the outbreak of the ongoing tragedies on the international scene,” and said the investigation had “nothing to do with international conflicts.”