SIDON, Lebanon (AFP) – Lebanese soldiers shot dead a man carrying a hand grenade outside the Palestinian refugee camp  of Ein el-Helweh on Saturday, an army spokesman said.  "The man was carrying a hand grenade and we are also investigating whether the belt he was wearing contained an explosives charge," the spokesman said, refusing to provide any further details. The man’s body was still at the scene and soldiers prevented journalists and photographers from approaching it, the spokesman said.

Security forces told an AFP correspondent at the scene that they would carry out a controlled explosion involving the body. Eyewitnesses said the man was shot close to an army checkpoint in the Taameer Ein el-Helweh zone, which is controlled by the military, except for a southern part which is considered a bastion of the Islamist group Jund Al-Sham. It was not immediately clear where the man had come from. The incident came just hours after a Lebanese soldier was killed in a blast at an army intelligence post near the northern city of Tripoli and another explosive device was defused, a security official told AFP.

Israel released from prison on Sunday a Lebanese who had completed a six-year jail term on espionage charges and took him to the border with Lebanon  for repatriation.  Nissim Nasser’s release, announced by Israeli authorities, has raised speculation that it is linked to German mediation efforts to secure a prisoner swap between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah group. Nasser, who was born in Lebanon to a Jewish mother and a Muslim father, was sentenced in 2002 to six years’ imprisonment after being convicted of spying for Hezbollah. "The prisoner was released from Nitzan Prison near Ramle (in central Israel) and is being escorted by police up north to Rosh Hanikra (on the Lebanese border)," police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said. "Later in the day he will be transferred to the ICRC (International Committee of the Red Cross) and then to Lebanon," he said.

Simultaneously Hezbollah handed over to the ICRC on the Lebanese side what it said were the remains of Israeli soldiers killed in the summer 2006 war. A senior Israeli official confirmed that the army had received a coffin but said tests had to be carried out on the contents to confirm whether the remains were those of Israeli soldiers. "A coffin apparently containing body parts of soldiers killed during the Second Lebanon War has been transferred by Hezbollah to the IDF (Israeli army) as a gesture for the ongoing negotiations on a prisoner exchange," the official said. "The coffin will be examined and the body parts will be examined to determine whether they indeed belong to Israeli soldiers." Israel and Hezbollah