HT to Weasel ZippersIsrael has demanded that the United Nations investigate an explosion at a Hezbollah house in southern Lebanon on Monday, which it said proved munitions were being stockpiled in violation of a truce.
Hezbollah has denied that the explosion that rocked a south Lebanon house was serving as a munitions bunker, and rejected media reports that a senior group official was killed in the blast.
An Israel Defense Forces source said the explosion indicated the Iranian-backed guerrilla group Israel fought in a month-long war in 2006 was keeping "banned ammunition" in southern Lebanon. "The Israeli military has asked UNIFIL to open an investigation," the source said, using the acronym for a United Nations peacekeeping force that has patrolled the troubled Israeli-Lebanese border area for more than three decades.
The cause of the blast appeared to be accidental, reports from Lebanon said. An Israeli military spokeswoman also confirmed Israel had "nothing to do" with the incident.
Lebanese media said that a senior official and at least three others were killed in a blast in a three-story building in the southern Lebanese village of Tayr Filsi, on the southern bank of the Litani River.
Lebanese media named the official as Saeed Nasser and security sources listed his son among the fatalities.
Hezbollah denied that the house was being used as an arms depot and said that the munitions that caused the blast had belonged to the Israel Defense Forces and were left over from the 2006 Second Lebanon War.
The group also said that nobody had been killed in the explosion and only one person wounded.