BEIRUT, April 10 (Xinhua) -- The UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) and the Lebanese Army denied that 17 rocket launchers had been found in the South over Easter weekend, The Daily Star reported on Tuesday.

    "It's absolutely false. There were no rocket launchers found," Major Diego Fullco, senior military public information officer for UNIFIL, told the newspaper.

    "A regular Spanish patrol came across 17 rounds of ammunition, and in cooperation with the Lebanese Army confiscated them and plans to destroy them, if they haven't done so," Fullco was quoted as saying, adding that each of the mortar bombs found was "about the size of an egg."

    The denial came after the Spanish Defense Ministry said in a statement on Friday that a cache of 17 rocket launchers had been found and that "the depot was camouflaged in a hard to reach area and the weapons were in a sealed barrel beside a small stream."

    The soldiers also found a concrete base, which could be used to launch the Bulgarian-made weapons, the ministry statement claimed.

    But Fullco said it could not be confirmed that any such item had been used during the 34-day war with Israel last summer.

    A Lebanese Army general, speaking to the paper on condition of anonymity, agreed with UNIFIL and called the Spanish report "exaggerated."

    Hezbollah fired over 4,000 rockets into northern Israel while the Israeli military fired constantly at targets throughout Lebanon, dropping around 4 million cluster bombs alone.

    On Nov. 19, 2006, UNIFIL announced the discovery of 17 Katyusha rockets in Rashaya al-Foukhar, south Lebanon, although the exact date of seizure was not disclosed.

    This is the first ammunition-finding announcement by UNIFIL since November.

    Nearly 13,000 troops from 30 countries contribute to UNIFIL, which was expanded as part of the cessation of hostilities that ended the war. UNIFIL first deployed in Lebanon in 1978 after an earlier Israeli invasion.