Five Lebanese soldiers were killed Saturday in a blast while removing munitions from a Hezbollah military facility in south Lebanon, a military source said.

“Five soldiers were killed in an explosion… inside a Hezbollah military facility,” the source said, requesting anonymity as they were not authorized to brief the media, adding that the incident took place as the troops were “removing munitions and unexploded ordnance left over from the recent war” between Israel and Hezbollah.

The army did not immediately issue a statement, but Lebanese President Joseph Aoun said he spoke to army commander Rodolphe Haykal about a “painful incident” that led to a number of dead and wounded from the army as a result of a munitions explosion as an engineering unit “was working to remove and disable” the ordnance, a presidency statement said Saturday.

Prime Minister Nawaf Salam paid tribute on X to the troops who were killed “while performing their national duty.”

The announcement came after Andrea Tenenti, spokesperson for UN peacekeepers in Lebanon, said Thursday that troops had “discovered a vast network of fortified tunnels” in the same area.

UN spokesman Farhan Haq had told reporters that peacekeepers and Lebanese troops found “three bunkers, artillery, rocket launchers, hundreds of explosive shells and rockets, anti-tank mines and about 250 ready-to-use improvised explosive devices.”

It came after the Lebanese government on Thursday voted to approve a US proposal that would ultimately lead to disarming the Hezbollah terror group, after tasking the army earlier in the week with drawing up a plan to establish a state monopoly on arms by the end of the year, a challenge to Hezbollah.

The decision to disarm the group prompted Hezbollah ministers and Muslim Shi’ite allies to walk out of the cabinet’s discussion on the plan, three Lebanese political sources told Reuters.

Submitted by US President Donald Trump’s envoy to the region, Tom Barrack, the plan sets out the most detailed steps yet for disarming the Iran-backed group, which has rejected mounting calls to disarm since last year’s devastating war with Israel.

In addition to disarming Hezbollah, the US proposal would also lead to ending Israel’s military operations in the country and the withdrawal of its troops from five positions in southern Lebanon.