As Lebanese troops and U.N. peacekeepers were in a state of alert across the border for fears over the possibility that more spying devices could have been planted in various areas of south Lebanon, Hizbullah announced it was the side that "uncovered and thwarted the enemy aggression."
A pre-dawn Hizbullah statement said the group has achieved a "major accomplishment" when its members "uncovered and thwarted an Israeli enemy aggression," a reference to three Israeli spy devices that have been blown up in south Lebanon over the weekend.
Two of these devices were detonated remotely by the Israeli army and one destroyed by the Lebanese army, a Lebanese military official said.
One explosion occurred before midnight Saturday in a hilly part of the Houla border zone and a second took place in the same district on Sunday morning, the official said.
It "seems the two detonations were triggered by Israel which exploded two spying devices it had planted in the sector a long while ago," she said.
Israel "feared for one reason or another that they might be discovered and proceeded to destroy them by exploding them remotely," the official added.
She said Lebanese troops located another device and exploded it on Sunday morning after going to the area on Saturday night with UNIFIL peacekeepers.
The devices appeared to have been planted in the sector a long while ago, according to the official.
A security official in south Lebanon said the devices were used for surveillance of communications by Hizbullah.
The Hizbullah statement said Islamic Resistance members "managed to uncover a spy device planted by Israel between Houla and Mais el-Jabal that had been installed prior to the July 2006 war." It said the device was booby-trapped.
But a UNIFIL statement said preliminary indications showed that these blasts were caused by "explosive charges contained in unattended underground sensors" which were placed in that area by Israeli forces "apparently during the 2006 war."
"UNIFIL immediately launched an investigation to ascertain all the facts and circumstances relating to the presence of these devices and to establish how the explosions were triggered," the statement added.