Hezbollah denies claims that rockets were stored at blast site

Oct 15, 2009, 14:02 GMT

Beirut - The Lebanese shiite movement Hezbollah has aired a video tape Thursday contradicting Israeli claims that the group removed weapons from the scene of a blast near the southern city of Tyre before allowing UN inspectors in.

Israel had claimed Hezbollah had removed dozens of rockets from the house of Abdel Nasser Issa, just after an explosion ripped through it on Monday night, citing footage shot by an unmanned drone.

However the Hezbollah footage shown Thursday on al-Manar television showed only a door and some furniture being removed from the building, where Issa was wounded in the blast.

Israel fought the Hezbollah movement in a bloody 34-day war in 2006, in which over a thousand people died. The border between Israel and Lebanon has been the scene of frequent skirmishes and rocket-fire since.

Israel earlier claimed their video showed Hezbollah militants removing rockets in two trucks before allowing in UN investigators. Also removed was a particularly large piece of equipment that could be a large rocket or a type of launcher.

The Lebanese daily al-Safir, which is close to the Hezbollah movement, meanwhile, citing an official Lebanese version, said Thursday that what happened at the garage of the three-story building in the village of Tayr Felsay was the result of direct contact of electrical wire with flammable materials.

The paper said that following the explosion, a group of residents came to the scene and began picking up pieces, including the iron garage door which was wrapped in a white sheet and put in a pickup truck for transport.

Several other pieces, according to the paper, were also put in a similar truck for transport to an empty lot in Deir Qanoun al-Nahr while the Israeli drone was monitoring the area.