Janta (Lebanon) - (AFP) - Hezbollah on Friday laid the foundation stone for a "jihadist tourism landmark" in the first camp established by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards in Lebanon to train fighters from the party in the Janta region in the east of the country.

"The first training camp for the Islamic resistance in Lebanon, and the first military course for training and graduating fighters for the Islamic resistance in Lebanon," said Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah in a speech he delivered during the foundation stone-laying ceremony.

The Iranian Revolutionary Guard took over the camp in 1982 and worked to expand it after it had been used for years by the Amal Movement, which is today led by Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri.

And he participated in the first sessions of the Janta training camp, the former Secretary General of Hezbollah, Abbas al-Musawi, who was assassinated by Israel in 1992.

According to Nasrallah, the camp was subjected to Israeli bombing several times, claiming the lives of Lebanese fighters and Iranian trainers.

Hezbollah no longer relied on this camp, which expanded gradually and witnessed many training courses, and opened several training camps in other regions.

At the Janta site, located in the eastern outskirts of the Lebanese Bekaa, Friday, military vehicles were placed and Hezbollah members deployed in the surrounding hills, with the participation of a few hundred people, including party officials.

Hezbollah broadcast a video showing its fighters during military exercises in the camp.

The laying of the foundation stone for the Janta landmark comes at the end of two months, during which Hezbollah held several activities on the occasion of the fortieth anniversary of its founding.

Hezbollah was founded in 1982 in the wake of the Israeli invasion with the support of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, and joined leftist groups that confronted the Israeli forces, and became the most prominent force that contributed to the liberation of the south after nearly 22 years of occupation.

The landmark of Janta is the second "tourist" site set up by Hezbollah.

In 2010, on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the liberation of southern Lebanon from the Israeli occupation, Hezbollah opened the "Mleeta Museum for Jihadi Tourism" in Iqlim al-Tuffah (south), in a military site that its fighters used as a base to launch operations against the Israeli army.

Lebanon and Israel are officially at war. In July 2006, Israel launched a devastating 33-day assault on Lebanon, after Hezbollah kidnapped two Israeli soldiers. The war killed 1,200 people in Lebanon, most of them civilians, and 160 Israelis, most of them soldiers.

Recently, Nasrallah warned of the outbreak of a war that he considered might subject Israel to Lebanon's conditions in the event that it is prevented from extracting oil and gas from its waters, at a time when the US mediation continues in the file of demarcating the maritime borders.