KFAR SHOUBA, Lebanon, 10 January 2005 — Lebanon’s Hezbollah resistance fighters killed an Israeli officer in a border attack yesterday, drawing Israeli strikes the United Nations said appeared to have killed a member of its observer force in south Lebanon.
Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV station said the group attacked an Israeli vehicle with a bomb in the disputed Shebaa Farms border zone, killing an Israeli officer. Shortly after, Israeli warplanes hit suspected Hezbollah posts in south Lebanon.
A Hezbollah fighter was also killed, the station said. Israeli Army radio reported the officer was killed when an Israeli vehicle hit a bomb in the Shebaa Farms area, site of numerous previous clashes between Hezbollah and Israel.
The Hezbollah attack and Israeli reprisal were the first flare-up of violence since July along Israel’s frontier with Lebanon, where Hezbollah was a main force in driving Israeli troops from the south in 2000 after a 22-year occupation. Lebanese security sources said the Israeli Army shelled houses near Shebaa Farms and helicopter gunships fired on a school in the border village of Kafarkela. There were no immediate reports of other casualties in Lebanon.
United Nations sources in Beirut said a French officer with an international truce monitoring force — the Observer Group in Lebanon (OGL) — was killed and a second Swedish officer wounded by what appeared to be Israeli fire after the attack.
A spokesman for the UN force in Lebanon said the French officer with the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization had been killed while a Swedish observer and their Lebanese driver were wounded.
The spokesman, Milos Srwjer, said the men had come under fire from the Israeli side of the Blue Line that the United Nations drew up to serve as the border between Lebanon and Israel after the Jewish state ended its 22-year occupation in 2000. He added, however, that the Israeli fire had been provoked by “shots from the Lebanese side” of the Blue Line.
The violence erupted on the day Palestinians voted for a president to succeed Yasser Arafat who died in November. Hezbollah, whose main patrons are Iran and Syria, is a fierce supporter of the Palestinian uprising and of Palestinian militant groups, including Hamas which is boycotting yesterday’s voting. Al-Manar said three Israeli soldiers were also wounded in the attack on their vehicle in Shebaa Farms. Israeli security sources said an explosion apparently caused by a roadside bomb wounded two Israelis.
An Israeli military spokeswoman said Israel’s Air Force struck three Hezbollah positions in retaliation. Al-Manar said four Israeli helicopters were seen evacuating casualties after the attack.
Hezbollah said in a statement yesterday’s attack was part of its “jihad to liberate” Shebaa Farms, and one of its parliamentary deputies called it a response to Israel’s presence in Shebaa Farms.
Hezbollah deputy, Abdullah Kassir, said that there was no political messages in the attack but it comes in the framework of “responding to the continuous Israeli occupation.” “Whether there will be more attacks and when, is up to the resistance leadership to decide,” Abdullah Kassir told Reuters.
Lebanon and Syria say Shebaa Farms are Lebanese territory. The United Nations says it is Israeli-occupied Syrian land. Yesterday’s attack is the first since July when Hezbollah killed two Israeli soldiers and lost one of its own fighters in clashes elsewhere on the border. On Friday, Israeli soldiers opened fire on a Lebanese civilian van driving on the other side of the border between the two countries, damaging the vehicle but causing no casualties.
In December, the Israeli Army deployed a radar system in the area capable of detecting infiltrations by unmanned spy planes from Lebanon after Hezbollah flew a drone for about 15 minutes along Israel’s northern Mediterranean coast.
