BEIRUT: Lebanon has complained to the United Nations Security Council about two “espionage devices” it claims Israel placed atop two of the country's mountains, the foreign ministry said on Saturday. The devices were found on Mount Sannine, northeast of Beirut, and Barouk Mountain, east of the capital, on Wednesday, an army spokesman said. The army said the device on Mount Sannine consisted of visual emission and reception parts. The second device was “more complicated,” it added, without elaborating. “Israel installed two espionage systems in the regions of Barouk and Sannine to receive and transmit communications and to serve as a link between Israeli spy posts on Lebanese territory and the (Israeli) border post of Roueisat al-Alam,” said a ministry statement published by state news agency ANI. The statement also accused Israel of having “installed surveillance cameras.” These acts were “a flagrant violation of Lebanese sovereignty, international law and Security Council Resolution 1701,” which led to the end of the 2006 war between Israel and Lebanon's militant Shiite party Hezbollah. And they constituted “aggression against Lebanese territory.” The army said it had been alerted to the existence of the devices by Hezbollah, which has been cooperating closely with army intelligence since the launch of a national crackdown on alleged Israeli spy rings in 2009. Hezbollah has accused arch-enemy Israel of having infiltrated the country's telecom sector. On December 3, the Israeli army detonated two of its spy devices in southern Lebanon, slightly injuring two passers-by, after Hezbollah uncovered their location near the coastal city of Tyre. The incident comes amid high tension in Lebanon over impending indictments by a UN-backed probe into the 2005 assassination of ex-premier Rafiq Hariri. The Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) is allegedly set to indict high-ranking Hezbollah members for the killing, a move the party has repeatedly warned against. – Agence France
