Lebanon blast set off by old shells - Hezbollah

Beirut: A south Lebanon explosion that raised tensions along the border with Israel was set off by old shells, not a secret arms cache, a senior Hezbollah official said on Wednesday.

The comments by Hezbollah's deputy leader Shaikh Naim Kassem marked the group's first comment on the nature of last week's explosion, which Israel and UN officials called a violation of a UN truce resolution.

Resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah, prohibits fighters from engaging in military activities in south Lebanon and forbids weapon smuggling to the group. But the fighers are believed to continue to have a clandestine presence in the area.

After the explosion in an abandoned building in Khirbet Silim, 15 kilometres from the Israeli border, Israel accused Iran and Syria of violating those conditions by sending weapons to Hezbollah.

"There is no violation of Resolution 1701," Kassem said. "What happened ... is a normal incident that has to do with leftover shells that had been collected during and after Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon" in 2000, he said.

Kassem spoke in an interview with the Qatari Al Watan newspaper to be published at a later date.

Kassem said Israel exaggerated the Khirbet Silim incident in an attempt to deflect from its occupation as well as its daily violations of Lebanon's airspace.

Last week's explosion was followed a few days later by a stone-throwing clash between Hezbollah supporters and UN peacekeepers who were conducting a follow-up investigation into the blast.