Five members of Palestinian militant group killed in blast on Lebanese-Syrian border

Five members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine militant group were killed in a blast overnight near Lebanon's border with Syria, sources said on Wednesday, with the group blaming Israel but security sources disputing the account.

An Israeli source said the Israeli military was not involved in the Syria-Lebanon border blast and 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 said 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 said 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.

The Israeli military said it does not comment on reports in foreign media. A correspondent for Israel's Army Radio, citing Israeli officials, said "there was no Israeli attack on the PFLP along the Lebanon-Syria border".

The PFLP, a group founded in 1968 that favours armed struggle to establish a Palestinian state, is sanctioned by the United States and the European Union. PFLP guerrillas hijacked four Western airliners with more than 500 people aboard in September 1970.