BEIRUT: Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea said Tuesday Hezbollah was in one way or another responsible for attacks on U.N. peacekeepers in south Lebanon and warned that more attacks were possible so long as the resistance group remained armed and maintained security zones.

“Hezbollah is directly or indirectly responsible for the operations that are against the international forces,” Geagea said in a televised news conference in his office in Meerab, north of Beirut, referring to peacekeepers belonging to the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon.

“In the south, the real authority belongs to Hezbollah and the real security presence in the south is for Hezbollah,” he added.

Hezbollah Monday denied accusations by France that said the resistance group and Syria most likely carried out a recent attack on members of the French contingent of UNIFIL. Five French peacekeepers were wounded after their patrol vehicle was struck by a roadside bomb near the southern coastal city of Tyre Friday.

It was the third roadside bomb targeting a UNIFIL convoy this year, with six Italian peacekeepers being wounded in May, while in July five French soldiers were wounded in another blast. Both occurred in Sidon, and no group has ever claimed responsibility for either attack.

“The international forces and the state's security apparatus were unable to reach the area or reveal circumstances behind the incidents that occurred in the south which means that the real security presence belongs to Hezbollah,” Geagea, a prominent member in the March 14 alliance, said.

The LF leader also expressed puzzlement that Hezbollah’s security apparatus was not able to reveal the perpetrators behind the attacks against UNIFIL given Hezbollah’s ability at “uncovering CIA operatives in Lebanon.”

Hezbollah has aired reports on its Al-Manar television station which identified alleged operatives belonging to the top U.S. spy agency. The report also accused the American Embassy in Lebanon of functioning as a recruiting ground for Lebanese informants.

"We cannot be convinced that there are extremist groups in the south without Hezbollah's acknowledge of them. Hezbollah recognizes the danger these groups pose toward it and therefore they do not exist in the south,” Geagea told reporters.

"Although if there are [any groups], then Hezbollah or Syria are nurturing them to undertake operations,” he added.

Geagea, who is in a wider coalition with former Prime Minister Saad Hariri, has been one of Hezbollah’s biggest critics and has stressed the need for the group to surrender its weapons to the Lebanese state.

"As long as there is an authority outside the jurisdiction of the state and as long as there is a party with a security and military zone, these [security] incidents will continue,” he said.