Two Belgian soldiers serving with the UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon were wounded Friday when they detonated a cluster bomb in southern Lebanon, a UN spokesman said.

The soldiers, who were clearing a minefield, were rushed to hospital with "serious but not life-threatening" wounds, the spokesman said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to make press statements.

The troops were working in a field near the village of Majdel Silim when one of them stepped on a cluster bomb.

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The explosion came exactly a week after Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt visited his country's troops in the UN peacekeeping force in south Lebanon and saw some of the cluster bombs and land mines remaining from the Israeli-Hezbollah war in July and August.

Earlier this week two cluster bombs wounded a total of five Lebanese, including two children, in south Lebanon.

At least 28 people have died in cluster bomb and land mine explosions in Lebanon since the 34-day war between Israel and Hezbollah guerrillas ended with a UN-brokered cease-fire on August 14.

The United Nations and human rights groups have accused Israel of laying mines and dropping as many as 4 million cluster bombs during the war. UN ordnance clearing experts have said that up to 1 million cluster bombs failed to explode and continue to threaten civilians.

Southern Lebanon is riddled with land mines. Israeli soldiers planted many of the mines during an 18-year occupation that ended in 2000. Other mines were planted by Hezbollah to ward off Israelis.