Hezbollah deny Tel Aviv bombing

Lebanese guerrilla group Hezbollah today denied it was behind the suicide bombing that killed four people in a Tel Aviv night club.

Palestinian security officials have arrested two suspects in connection with the Friday night bombing and have pointed to Hezbollah as the apparent mastermind of the attack.

The group has been accused by Israeli and Palestinian officials of trying to disrupt an informal Mideast truce.

Hezbollah said in a statement that it “categorically denies accusations that alluded to a supposed role it played in the Tel Aviv operation, considering them completely devoid of truth.”

The accusations are part of the “incitement which the Zionist enemy (Israel) practices against Hezbollah,” it said.

Earlier today, Sheik Naim Kassem, Hezbollah’s deputy secretary general, said the group had nothing to do with the attack and repeated the group’s long-time assertion that it does not carry out attacks in the Palestinian territories or Israel.

“Hezbollah has no personnel or organisational presence in Palestine. It has no relationship with operations that occur inside Palestine,” Kassem told the Voice of Lebanon radio station.

Hezbollah, which is backed by Syria and Iran and maintains positions near the Lebanese border with Israel, fought Israel’s 18-year occupation of southern Lebanon, which ended in 2000.

Since then, Hezbollah has occasionally attacked Israeli soldiers in the Chebaa Farms, a disputed area near where the borders of Lebanon, Syria and Israel meet.

The main Palestinian militant groups – Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Al Aqsa – have denied involvement in the Tel Aviv bombing, and said they remained committed to an informal truce reached earlier this month.