BEIRUT, 8 October 2006 — Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora has appealed to UN chief Kofi Annan to put pressure on Israel to stop its warplanes from overflying Lebanon and withdraw from a village, his office said yesterday. Siniora made the request during a telephone conversation with Annan late Friday, saying the overflights violated UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the month-long Israel-Hezbollah war on Aug. 14.
The Lebanese premier also underlined the need to put an end “to the violations by Israel of the Blue Line (UN-demarcated border), particularly its occupation of the village of Ghajar,” his office said. Israeli aircraft have continued to overfly Lebanon since the Jewish state withdrew its forces earlier this week from all of southern Lebanon barring Ghajar village.
Ghajar, which straddles the border between Lebanon and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, has been wholly occupied by Israeli forces since the end of its offensive against the Hezbollah resistance group.
The village’s residents are Alawites and on the Golan side have Israeli citizenship as that part of village was unilaterally annexed by Israel in 1981 along with the rest of the Syrian territory.
Israel has said it will continue to overfly Lebanon until the release of two of its soldiers who were captured by Hezbollah on July 12, sparking the Israeli offensive.
On Friday, Israeli warplanes flew at a low altitude over the Bekaa Valley and the town of Baalbek, a Hezbollah stronghold in eastern Lebanon.
A Lebanese civilian was killed and nearly a dozen police were wounded in a shootout when the security forces tried to stop illegal construction work by Beirut residents, police said yesterday.
The exchange of fire occurred on Friday, leaving one civilian dead and three other residents wounded along with 11 police officers, police said in a statement.
The incident took place close to the airport of the Lebanese capital, when a group of residents gathered and started to throw stones at police before shooting in their direction.
The security forces, which had been trying to halt the illegal construction work for a second consecutive day, then responded by returning fire. Illegal construction is widespread in Beirut’s Shiite southern suburbs.
