Cairo - Egyptian security forces have arrested 49 men, including seven Israeli citizens and one Lebanese citizen, on charges of supporting Hamas and Hezbollah, the Interior Ministry and the lawyer for the men said on Wednesday.

The men, who were arrested in December from locations around Egypt, included 41 Egyptians, seven Arab Israelis, and at least one Lebanese man, a source in the Egyptian Interior Ministry, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the German News Agency dpa on Wednesday.

He said Egyptian security officials initially accused the men of trying to recruit Egyptians to fight in the Gaza Strip, but that Egyptian security forces had added the accusation of supporting Hezbollah when they leaked the story al-Masry al-Youm, an Egyptian newspaper, which published the story Wednesday.

The men now stand accused of trying to buy houses along Egypt's border with the Gaza Strip at the divided town of Rafah with the aim of opening smuggling tunnels under the border with the Gaza Strip, of "supporting the ideology of Hezbollah" and of providing Hamas with money and other logistical support, a second source in the Egyptian Interior Ministry, also speaking on condition of anonymity, told dpa.

Benny Sharoni, a spokesman for the Israeli Embassy in Cairo, said "we are working with the Egyptian authorities to find out more information."

Property values along the Egyptian side of the Rafah border have risen by a factor of 10 over the 2-year-old blockade of the Gaza Strip because residents can earn thousands of Egyptian pounds a day by providing cover for smuggling tunnels.

Lawyer Montasser al-Zayat, a former member of the Islamist group Gamaa al-Islamiya and a former associate of deputy al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, told dpa that the brother of the detained Lebanese man had asked al-Zayat to defend him.

"The allegations that the group propagated Hezbollah ideology are unfounded," al-Zayat told dpa. "It is more likely that the group provided logistical and monetary support to Hamas, but it has nothing to do with Hezbollah."

Al-Zayat said he had not been allowed to see the detainees or to attend their interrogation by the Egyptian authorities, but based on conversations with "private sources" and "close friends and the families" of the detained, he thought it was "unlikely that the issue is related to promoting Hezbollah's beliefs."

Al-Masry al-Youm on Wednesday reported that the men were also accused of spreading Shia Islam, but Interior Ministry officials could not confirm this to dpa.

Egypt has come under intense international pressure, particularly from Israel and the United States, to halt weapons smuggling across its border with the Gaza Strip, and has detained dozens of people on suspicion of providing Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, with support.

At the beginning of Israel's bombardment of the Gaza Strip in December, Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah and Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul-Gheit traded televised recriminations over Egypt's response to the crisis. (dpa)