Beirut (dpa) - Followers of the pro-Iranian Hezbollah movement in Lebanon lashed out Thursday at Egypt after its public prosecutor accused the movement of sending operatives to carry out attacks in the country.

"This is a totally false and fabricated accusation regarding Hezbollah, because the movement does not have any role outside Lebanon," Ali Zeineddine, a follower of Hezbollah told the German news agency, dpa in Beirut's southern suburbs, a neighbourhood heavily supportive of the movement.

In a statement released Wednesday evening Egyptian Public Prosecutor Abdel-Magid Mohammed accused Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah of dispatching agents to Egypt during Israel's offensive in the Gaza Strip with the aim of recruiting local agents to conduct attacks, and to incite the people and the armed forces to revolt, to spy on Egypt and to smuggle weapons and cash to Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

"Israel has asked the Egyptians to fabricate such accusations against Hezbollah with the aim of defaming its image in the Arab state," Hassan Mansour, another Hezbollah follower said, in the area of Haret Kreik.

"We know this is not the opinion of the Egyptian people, who are great backers of the movement, but this is the voice of their Zionist government," said Alia Hussein.

"Hezbollah is a resistance movement against Israel and all Arabs should be proud of this movement because it has defeated the strongest army in the world ( Israel)," the chador-clad lady told dpa.

The Egyptian prosecutor has said that he had received "certain information" from Egypt's domestic intelligence service, State Security Investigations, that a Hezbollah cell had rented apartments overlooking the Suez Canal in order to spy on traffic through the canal, that they had spied on resorts in Sinai, and that they had rented rooms in fashionable districts where Hezbollah agents held training workshops on spreading Shiiism thought in majority-Sunni Egypt.

Hezbollah's press officer in Beirut has failed since Wednesday to comment on the accusations.

Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, whose movement announced that it had defeated Israel during its 33-day war on Lebanon on July 12, 2006, has declared "war" on December
28, 2008 on Egypt during the Israeli onslaught on Gaza in the same month.

The Hezbollah leader called on the Egyptian people and armed forces to compel their leaders and open the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt.

His statement drew a fierce response from Cairo.

"You are a man who used to enjoy respect, but you have insulted the Egyptian people," Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit said at the time addressing the Hezbollah leader.

Egypt has rejected pressure to open its border to break the Israeli economic siege of Gaza, fearing that it might get saddled with responsibility for 1.5 million Palestinians.

Hezbollah and its leadership had not forgotten how Egypt criticized the movement for recklessness at the outset of the 2006 war.

Many Arab states, among them Egypt, have criticized the movement for igniting a war with Israel in July 2006, after its guerrillas snatched two Israeli soldiers during a cross border attack, prompting Israel to launch a wide-scale attack against Lebanon that killed 1200, mostly Lebanese civilians.

Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan oppose Hezbollah and the Palestinian fundamentalist movement Hamas for its links with Shiite Iran, whose influence they view as a threat to the Middle East region.