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Blast in south Lebanon (archives)
Photo: AFP

Explosion in Hezbollah weapons depot

Lebanese media reports of mysterious blast in Tair Harfa, town near Israel border. Hezbollah cordons off area

Lebanon's state agency has reported a large explosion in the country's south near the border with Israel. The blast hit a Hezbollah weapons cache.

 

National News said early Monday the reasons behind the blast near Tair Harfa were not clear. Andrea Tenente, who is a spokesman for the UN peacekeeping force in the area, UNIFIL, said it was investigating.

 

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South Lebanon, the scene of bitter fighting between Israel and Lebanese militant Hezbollah guerrillas in 2006, is considered a Hezbollah stronghold. Security officials said Hezbollah had cordoned off the area.

  

Video courtesy of jn1.tv

 

A Reuters reporter said that members of the militant group Hezbollah, the Lebanese Army and around 50 members of the UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) were at the site of the blast but that he was prevented from approaching the area.

 

The explosion caused no human casualties, residents said, but did kill several farm animals.

 

A Lebanese security source said the blast was caused by a rocket that had been fired into Lebanon during the 2006 war with Israel but did not detonate on impact. But UNIFIL spokesman Andrea Tenenti said UNIFIL soldiers in the area were still trying to ascertain the cause.

 

Some two months ago, a series of blasts killed at least nine people and wounded seven in the Hezbollah-controlled Beqaa Valley of eastern Lebanon.

 

The Shiite terror group announced that three of its members were killed and a few others were injured in the blasts, which hit an arms stockpile in a building under construction in an uninhabited area between the villages of Nabishit and Khodr.

 

Last July, an air-to-ground missile fired by an Israeli plane detonated a surveillance device that was planted between the southern Lebanese towns of Zrariyeh and Tayr Filsay.

 

According to the report, the device was planted on a Hezbollah telecommunications cable. The device was destroyed by Israel because the terror group had exposed it, the National News Agency reported.

 

AP contributed to this report

 

 

 


פרסום ראשון: 12.17.12, 09:48
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