BEIRUT, Lebanon — The Lebanese army said a blast at a weapons depot near the Israeli border killed six soldiers on Saturday, with a military source saying the troops were removing munitions from a Hezbollah facility.
Under the truce that ended last year’s war between Israel and Hezbollah, Lebanese troops have been deploying in the country’s south and dismantling the Iran-backed terror group’s infrastructure in the region.
The deaths come after the Lebanese government decided this week to disarm Hezbollah and tasked the army with drawing up a plan to complete the process by year’s end.
Hezbollah has said it will ignore the cabinet’s decision, which came under heavy US pressure, while the group’s backer Iran said Saturday it opposed the effort.
A military statement gave a preliminary toll of six soldiers killed “while an army unit was inspecting a weapons depot and dismantling its contents in Wadi Zibqin,” in Tyre district near the Israeli border.
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Investigations were underway to determine the cause of the blast, it added.
A military source, requesting anonymity as they were not authorised to brief the media, told AFP the blast took place “inside a Hezbollah military facility.” Troops were “removing munitions and unexploded ordnance left over from the recent war” when the blast occurred, the source added.
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun said he spoke to army commander Rodolphe Haykal about a “painful incident” that led to a number of dead and wounded from the army as a result of a munitions explosion as an engineering unit “was working to remove and disable” the ordnance, a presidency statement said.
Prime Minister Nawaf Salam paid tribute on X to the troops who were killed “while performing their national duty.”
The announcement came after Andrea Tenenti, spokesperson for UN peacekeepers in Lebanon, said Thursday that troops had “discovered a vast network of fortified tunnels” in the same area.
UN spokesman Farhan Haq had told reporters that peacekeepers and Lebanese troops found “three bunkers, artillery, rocket launchers, hundreds of explosive shells and rockets, anti-tank mines and about 250 ready-to-use improvised explosive devices.”
It came after the Lebanese government on Thursday voted to approve a US proposal that would ultimately lead to disarming the Hezbollah terror group, after tasking the army earlier in the week with drawing up a plan to establish a state monopoly on arms by the end of the year, a challenge to Hezbollah.
The decision to disarm the group prompted Hezbollah ministers and Muslim Shi’ite allies to walk out of the cabinet’s discussion on the plan, three Lebanese political sources told Reuters.
Submitted by US President Donald Trump’s envoy to the region, Tom Barrack, the plan sets out the most detailed steps yet for disarming the Iran-backed group, which has rejected mounting calls to disarm since last year’s devastating war with Israel.
In addition to disarming Hezbollah, the US proposal would also lead to ending Israel’s military operations in the country and the withdrawal of its troops from five positions in southern Lebanon.
A senior adviser to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Saturday that Tehran “is certainly opposed to the disarmament of Hezbollah.”
“Iran has always supported the people and the resistance of Lebanon and continues to do so,” international affairs adviser Ali Akbar Velayati told Iran’s Tasnim news agency.
Lebanon’s foreign ministry slammed the comments as “flagrant and unacceptable interference,” reminding “the leadership in Tehran that Iran would be better served by focusing on the issues of its own people.”
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