The Israeli military says the Hezbollah militia has riddled southern Lebanon with bunkers and underground weapons depots, with most located in civilian villages.
A memo drafted by the military and sent on Thursday to Israeli embassies details what it says are Hezbollah's stepped up activities to fortify the volatile border region since the end of the 2006 Lebanon war.
Military intelligence estimates that since the war "Hezbollah has built as many as 550 bunkers in the southern Lebanon region, holding various weapons. In addition, the organisation has built 300 underground facilities and 100 storage units for munitions including rockets, missiles and other weapons," said the memo seen by AFP.
"Many of these terror centres are located near hospitals, private homes and schools, Hezbollah's way of taking advantage of the civilian population of Lebanon," it said.
A military spokesman also confirmed that a map published by the Washington Post detailing the exact sites of these facilities was supplied by the army.
During the 34-day war in 2006, much of the fighting took place on open scrubland, but since then the militia has gravitated towards built-up areas out of the reach of UN peacekeepers -- and into heavily populated civilian areas, Israel says.
Israel had already claimed at the time that Hezbollah was using human shields, but Human Rights Watch
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