GAZA/BEIRUT, 24 January Lebanon’s Hezbollah fighters fired rockets and mortar shells at Israeli outposts in the Shebaa Farms area yesterday. Israeli warplanes later attacked suspected Hezbollah positions in southern Lebanon.
In the first Israeli air raid on Lebanon in three months, witnesses said an Israeli jet fighter swooped over a hill in the Shebaa Farms area, firing at least one air-to-surface missile. Israeli artillery also shelled suspected Hezbollah areas.
Lebanese security officials, speaking on customary condition of anonymity, said Hezbollah fighters shelled three Israeli positions in the Shebaa Farms. Witnesses reported heavy smoke billowing from the posts. In Jerusalem, the Israeli Army spokesman said Hezbollah fired missiles at a number of outposts, but nobody was injured. He said the army responded, but would not say how.
Lebanese officials said the Israelis fired artillery shells at a valley near the Lebanese village of Halta, close to the Shebaa Farms on Lebanon’s border with the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. There was no immediate word of casualties on the Lebanese side.
Israel’s air raid was its first on Lebanon since Oct. 22, when Israeli fighter jets attacked suspected Hezbollah positions after the group attacked Israeli outposts in the same area.
Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer branded the rocket attacks as "very dangerous" and blamed them on Iran and Syria. Spokesman Yarden Vatikai, said that while Israel would not be dragged into fighting in the area, it would not tolerate such attacks.
Meanwhile, two Israeli women wounded in a Jerusalem shooting on Tuesday died while a member of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, which took responsibility for the shooting, said the group would halt attacks if Israel ended its siege on Palestinian areas and halted assassinations of activists.
In Brussels, the European Commission said the latest EU estimates put the cost of the damage inflicted by the Israeli Army on EU-financed development projects in the West Bank and Gaza at 17.3 million euros ($15 million).
"This list is being updated on a daily basis," commission external relations spokesman Gunnar Wiegand told reporters.
