Beirut  - The Lebanese Shiite militant movement Hezbollah denied on Friday rumors that its leader Hassan Nasrallah had been poisoned.

"It's a fabricated story - only rumors," Galeb Abu Zainab, a member of Hezbollah's political bureau was quoted as saying.

On Wednesday, the Iraqi website Almalaf reported that Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah had been poisoned last week and that Iranian doctors had been rushed to Lebanon to save his life.

It cited undisclosed sources as saying Israel was responsible for the assassination attempt.

"The only party that can benefit from these rumors is the Israeli intelligence service," Zainab said.

Nasrallah has been living in hiding in Beirut since the July 2006 war with Israel. He rarely appears in public for fear of Israeli assassination attempts.

His predecessor, Abbas al-Musawi, was killed in an Israeli airstrike in southern Lebanon in 1992. Nasrallah's military commander, Imad Mughniyeh, was assassinated in February, 2008 in Damascus. (dpa)