The device exploded, apparently detonated remotely by the Israelis, when it was found near the village of Majdel Silim, about 8 kilometers from the border with Israel, Hezbollah said in a statement.
The Lebanese military also reported the find and the explosion, saying two people working in a truck nearby were injured in the blast. It too said in a statement the device was intended to spy on the network.
A spokesman for the UN peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon had no comment, and Israeli officials could not immediately be reached for comment.
Hezbollah has its own separate network of phone lines and underground cables, believed to link its positions and command centers throughout the country. Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah had said the network helped his guerrillas fight Israel’s army in 2006, when the two sides battled in a 34-day war that killed some 1,200 people in Lebanon and 160 in Israel.
Majdel Silim is south of the Litani River, the zone where Hezbollah is banned from keeping weapons under a UN
resolution that ended the 2006 war. Last year, the UN
peacekeeping force said Israel detonated two underground sensors planted by the Israelis during the fighting.
Also Friday, Lebanese judicial officials said a military court convicted a man of spying for Israel and sentenced him to 15 years in prison and hard labor.
The sentenced man, Ziad Homsi, began working with Israel in 2006 and supplied Israeli agents with pictures of an area in the eastern Bekaa Valley where three Israeli soldiers went missing in a 1982 battle during Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, the judicial officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.
More than 100 people in Lebanon have been arrested since 2009 on suspicion of collaborating with Israel, with which Lebanon is officially at war. At least eight people have been sentenced to death for espionage.
