JERUSALEM: Two Israeli soldiers were wounded yesterday when a roadside bomb detonated near the Lebanese ceasefire line in an attack claimed by the Shia Hezbollah movement.
It was the first Hezbollah attack on Israeli forces since March when another explosive device targeted troops but caused no casualties.
The incident took place in the Shebaa Farms, a flashpoint area on the Israeli-held sector of the Golan Heights which lies close to the junction of the Syria-Lebanon border.
Israel denounced the blast as a “blatant breach” of its sovereignty, and troops responded with artillery fire against two Hezbollah positions in southern Lebanon.
“We have proved that we responded forcefully to every attempt to harm us, be it in the north, south or any other sector,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a cabinet meeting Tuesday, quoted by his office.
The attack took place just 48 hours after Israeli troops fired on a group of people seen crossing the line from Lebanon into the Israeli-held sector.
One Lebanese soldier was lightly wounded in the incident.
“Two soldiers were injured by an explosive device. It was activated against them during activity near the Lebanon border,” a military spokeswoman said.
She said the blast occurred on the Israeli side of the ceasefire line.
Security sources said one of the soldiers was lightly wounded while the second was in a slightly worse condition.
Shortly afterwards, a second explosive device was detonated in the same area, but nobody was hurt, the spokeswoman said.
Following the first blast, troops opened fire across the ceasefire line, army spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner said.
“IDF responded to IED (improvised explosive device) attack with artillery at two Hezbollah positions in southern Lebanon,” he wrote on his Twitter account.
Denouncing the blasts as “unprovoked aggression,” Lerner put the blame on Beirut and Hezbollah.
“The Lebanese government and Hezbollah are directly responsible for this blatant breach of Israel’s sovereignty,” he said.
Hezbollah claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement which only mentioned one explosive device.
It said its fighters “detonated an explosive device on the Shebaa hills against a motorised Israeli patrol causing a number of injuries among the occupation’s soldiers.” It was the second incident in the flashpoint Shebaa Farms area in three days.
On Sunday, troops opened fire after seeing a number of people crossing the ceasefire line into Israeli territory, saying the suspects had fled back into Lebanon.
The Lebanese army said the shots had hit one of their positions, lightly injuring one of its soldiers.
The Shebaa Farms area —known in Hebrew as Har Dov — is located at the point where the Syrian-Lebanese border meets with the Israeli-held sector of the Golan Heights.
A mountainous, narrow sliver of land rich in water resources measuring 25sqm, it has been occupied by Israel since the 1967 Six Day War.
AFP
