Beirut  - The Italian contingent in the United Nations Interim Forces in Southern Lebanon (UNIFIL) Sunday arrested two people disguised as cleaners trying to smuggle "plastic material that could be explosives" into a UN base in southern Lebanon, a UN statement said.

According to a statement from the Italian peacekeeping force, their troops arrested two Lebanese men on charges of smuggling plastic explosives into their headquarters in the southern town of Tebnine.

"The two suspects were turned over to the Lebanese Army along with the "small quantity of plastic material that could be explosives," the statement said. The men were identified only by their initials AZ and AH.

The suspicious plastic was found in a garbage truck during a routine search.

Lebanese security sources said the two suspects were cleaners who were employed by UNIFIL's Italian battalion and had been working at their Tebnine headquarters for more than two years. The men were residents of the village of Jmaiyjmeh, which is close to Tebnine.

Earlier, a UN source told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa that "the explosives were hidden in a garbage truck trying to enter the Tebnine base."

Italy has 2,500 troops in southern Lebanon, the largest contingent working within UNIFIL.

The peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon grew from around 2,300 to 15,000, in accordance with a UN Security Council resolution in August 2006 that halted 33 days of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah.

Since December 2008, UNIFIL has taken extra precautionary measures after receiving threats from fundamentalist groups with close links to the al-Qaeda terrorist network.

On June 25, 2007, six UN peacekeepers from the Spanish battalion were killed and two others injured in a car bombing that targeted their patrol in southern Lebanon. (dpa)