BEIRUT, Lebanon - Compulsory military service has been officially abolished in Lebanon, the army command announced Monday.

"Military service is considered abolished indefinitely starting February 10," in line with a law voted by parliament in 2005, it said in a statement.

"The army will not be affected by the measure, as military service recruits are not among army ranks any more," an army spokesman said.

"Military service recruits used to account for up to 35 percent a few years ago, when we needed to reunite Lebanese youths in a single national institution after the (1975-1990) civil war," he said.

In January 2005, the Lebanese parliament voted to scrap compulsory military service, with the act due to come into effect 24 months after the law was published.

Lebanon's army split during the civil war years, and was reunited after the end of the conflict. It now numbers about 60,000 troops.

Backed by UN peacekeepers, the army was deployed in south Lebanon up to the border with Israel last year for the first time in decades following the Jewish state's war on the Lebanese Shiite guerrilla group Hezbollah.

The Lebanese army engaged in its first border clash with Israeli forces last Wednesday, without causing casualties, and in a rare action the next day its troops confiscated a truck-load of weapons belonging to Hezbollah.