Hezbollah on Monday accused Israel of having installed spying devices, destroyed at the weekend in southern Lebanon, following the 2006 war between the Jewish state and the Shi’ite movement.
”The Islamic Resistance [Hezbollah] has discovered a spying device installed by the Israeli enemy on a cable between the villages of Mays and Jebel after the 2006 war,” the Lebanese militant faction said in a statement.
”It was established that the device was booby trapped and that the enemy had tried to blow it up once it knew it had been found out,” the statement added.
Hezbollah said the Lebanese army and troops from the Unifil peacekeeping mission later discovered other devices, prompting Israel to destroy some of them, while the others were dismantled by the Lebanese side.
A Lebanese military source told Agence France-Presse on Sunday that three ”Israeli spying devices” had been destroyed near the border with Israel, two of them blown up by the Israeli army.
Unifil said: ”Preliminary indications are that these explosions were caused by explosive charges contained in unattended underground sensors which were placed in this area by the Israel Defence Forces apparently during the 2006 war.”
A security services official told AFP the gadgets were used for ”eavesdropping on and surveillance of the communications of the resistance”, a reference to Hezbollah.
The Israeli army said the Lebanese allegations ”do not warrant a serious response. We will continue to act to maintain calm on Israel’s northern border.
”Hezbollah is once again trying to divert the attention of the international community from their continuous violations of UN Resolution 1701.”
More than 70 people have been arrested this year in Lebanon on suspicion of spying for Israel.
The UN said in July that if the existence of Israeli spy networks in Lebanon was proved it would be a serious violation of Lebanese sovereignty and of UN Security Council resolutions, especially resolution 1701 which ended the 2006 war. — AFP
