Hezbollah leadership intact - Nasrallah

Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah tonight said that the group’s leadership remained intact, appearing an interview on Al-Jazeera a day after Israel claimed to have bombed a bunker where he may have been hiding.

“I can confirm without exaggerating or using psychological warfare, that we have not been harmed,” he said.

He denied claims by Israel to have destroyed half of Hezbollah’s rocket arsenal.

Nasrallah said there was "no way in the world'' he would surrender two Israeli soldiers snatched by his guerrillas on July 12 except as part of a prisoner exchange brokered thrugh indirect negotiations.

Last night, Israeli warplanes dropped 23 tonnes of explosives on a site in south Beirut it said was an underground bunker where Hezbollah leaders, including possibly Nasrallah, were meeting.

Hezbollah immediately denied there was any bunker or that any of its members was hurt. It said the strike hit a mosque under construction.

Al-Jazeera, which aired only excerpts of the interview, said it was taped earlier today. The interviewer said it took place amid tight security but did not say where. Nasrallah has been in hiding since Israel’s onslaught began July 12, though he gave a speech on Hezbollah television on Sunday.

Nasrallah also denied claims by Israel to have destroyed half of Hezbollah’s rocket arsenal, calling the claims ”baseless”.

“Hezbollah has so far stood fast, absorbed the strike and has retaken the initiative and made the surprises that it had promised, and there are more surprises,” he said, warning that a Hezbollah defeat would be “a defeat for the entire Islamic nation”.