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| By: Associated Press |
| Published: February 5, 2006 |
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Hezbollah guerrillas attacked an Israeli military position in a disputed part of the south Lebanon border on Friday, provoking swift Israeli airstrikes on suspected Hezbollah sites, Lebanese security officials said.
Hezbollah said in a statement that its bombardment of rockets and shells was in retaliation for the killing by Israel this week of a 15-year-old Lebanese boy who had gone missing in the border area on Wednesday. Hezbollah added it attacked the same Israeli position that fired the shots which killed the boy.
Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah said his group's attack Friday was a message to Israel that "the resistance was, still is and will always be there to defend the dignity and blood of its people."
"Our blood is not cheap... The resistance will always be ready to retaliate and punish the criminal killers in any position and whatever the sacrifices," he said in a speech after the attack.
The Israeli army confirmed that Hezbollah fired a barrage of rockets at an Israeli military position in Chebaa Farms and said there were no immediate reports of injuries.
Israeli army spokeswoman Maj. Avital Leibovich described the attack as a "serious act of provocation" and said the military was put on high alert in the area.
Shortly afterward, Israeli planes bombed suspected Hezbollah targets along south Lebanese border, said a Lebanese security official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.
The official said the planes fired at least four missiles at targets near the villages of Kfar Chouba, Kfar Hamam and Halta in the Chebaa Farms area. Israeli artillery also fired at sites where the Hezbollah rockets were thought to have come from. There was no immediate word on casualties.
On Wednesday Israel said that its troops fired at, and apparently hit, a man who crossed the border earlier in the day carrying a firearm and binoculars.
Lebanon said the person who went missing after coming under Israeli fire was a 15-year-old shepherd Ibrahim Youssef Rhayyel.
Hezbollah insisted Rhayyel was a civilian and Nasrallah warned Wednesday that if the boy were found dead, the guerrillas would "punish the killers without hesitation."
The boy's body was found Thursday, riddled with bullets, on the Lebanese side of the border.
In its statement Friday, Hezbollah said the Israeli outpost took "direct hits" from the shelling, but the group did not mention any casualties.
Chebaa Farms is frequently the scene of fighting between Hezbollah and Israeli troops. A tiny parcel of land held by Israel, Lebanon claims the territory and Hezbollah has vowed to liberate it. But U.N. cartographers say it belongs to that part of Syria which is occupied by Israel. It lies only a few kilometers (miles) from Israel proper.
In November, fighting in Chebaa Farms left four Hezbollah guerrillas dead and 11 Israeli soldiers wounded.
The last flare-up in cross-border violence was in late December when rockets fired from Lebanon crashed in the northern Israeli town of Kiryat Shmona, damaging property but causing no casualties. Israel retaliated with an airstrike against a radical Palestinian guerrilla base on a hill south of Beirut. |
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