Five members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine militant group have been killed in an overnight explosion near Lebanon’s border with Syria, security sources told Reuters, with the group blaming Israeli air strikes.
An Israeli source told Reuters the Israeli military was not involved in the Syria-Lebanon border blast. Lebanon’s army declined to comment.
A PFLP statement on Wednesday said five of its members were killed in Israeli bombing on a site controlled by the group near the border.
The group’s spokesman in Damascus Anwar Raja told Reuters an Israeli strike on the Lebanese town of Qusaya had killed five members, including fighters, and wounded 10.
A representative for the PFLP in Lebanon Abu Kifah Ghazi said airplanes had been heard over the PFLP position all night.
But one Palestinian security source and a Lebanese security source told Reuters the deaths were the result of explosives and ammunition detonating as the PFLP members were moving them.
A second Lebanese security source said he could not confirm the blast was the result of an Israeli strike.
Read the article in The Canberra Times (AAP).