Hezbollah denies 'rocket' pics
2009-10-15 15:32
Beirut - Shi'ite militant group Hezbollah on Thursday denied that Israeli pictures showed rockets being removed from the south Lebanon home of one of its activists, insisting the images merely portrayed metal shutters.
The Israeli army on Tuesday released film taken by a drone, saying it showed rockets being taken away from the home of Abdel Nasser Issa in Tayr Felsay village after a rocket exploded in his house.
"The supposed rockets recorded by Israeli spy planes are in reality ... only the metal shutters at the place where the Tayr Felsay explosion occurred," Hezbollah's Al-Manar television station reported.
The station broadcast pictures taken in daylight it said showed men outside a garage putting a rolled up metal shutter into a truck, watched by a Lebanese soldier and two troops from the UN's peacekeeping force Unifil.
The scene was filmed at Deir Qanun el-Nahr, a place near Tayr Felsay, Al-Manar said.
Israel has repeatedly accused Hezbollah of rearming, and an Israeli army spokesperson claimed on Tuesday night the group has "dozens of arms caches containing hundreds of rockets."
The pictures from the drone "show how the rockets were transferred to a weapons store in a village four kilometres away," she said.
Local residents told AFP Issa had found a rocket by a river near his home and taken it back to his garage. He was trying to dismantle the device when it blew up and wounded him, a security official said.
A Hezbollah statement confirmed the incident but denied local media reports that five people had perished. The army also said there were no fatalities and that one person was wounded.
The Israeli army said the blast "proves again the presence of weapons forbidden in southern Lebanon" under UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 summer war between Israel and Hezbollah.
The 34-day war killed more than 1 200 Lebanese, mostly civilians, and more than 160 Israelis, mostly soldiers.
Resolution 1701 called for the removal of weapons in southern Lebanon from the hands of everyone except the Lebanese army and other state security forces.