Jerusalem: Israel's military said that
surveillance footage from drones shows that the explosions
that rocked a village in southern Lebanon this week occurred
at a residential building used by Hezbollah as a weapons
depot.
A series of blasts ripped through a building in the
Hezbollah-dominated village of Shehabiyeh on Friday. There did
not appear to be any casualties from the blasts, which set off
a large fire. Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran, did not
comment on the nature of the explosions or whether the
building had been used to store weapons.
Israeli military spokeswoman Lt Col Avital Leibovich told
The Associated Press yesterday that footage from Israeli
drones shows suspected Hezbollah militants removing weapons
from the site and transferring them to other Hezbollah
facilities.
Leibovich said it was the third time this year that
explosions have torn through a suspected Hezbollah weapons
cache. She also accused the group of maintaining military
facilities -- including bunkers and storage depots for large
quantities of weapons -- in 160 villages across southern
Lebanon.
She alleged that the caches include the type of rockets
that Hezbollah launched by the hundreds on northern Israeli
cities during the 2006 war.
Friday's blasts occurred south of the Litani River, the
zone where Hezbollah is banned from keeping weapons under a UN
resolution that ended the 2006 war between the Shiite
militants and Israel.
The area is patrolled by a UN peacekeeping force, known
as UNIFIL, as well as Lebanese soldiers and has been largely
peaceful since the conflict. UNIFIL said yesterday that it was
still investigating Friday's incident, but that it had no
reports of suspicious activities.
PTI
First Published: Sunday, September 05, 2010, 09:20