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Israel hit by fire from Lebanon

Posted on: Thursday, 25 August 2005, 04:45 CDT

KIRYAT SHMONA, Israel (Reuters) - A rocket fired from Lebanon slammed into a northern Israeli community on Thursday, Israeli military sources and witnesses said.

Israeli witnesses said the rocket struck a chicken coop, killing some chickens and causing some damage but no other casualties.

Israeli military sources said that troops, investigating an explosion in Margaliot where smoke was seen rising, found a large rocket had been fired from neighboring Lebanon.

Lebanese security sources said two rockets were fired and that one fell short of its mark, striking inside Lebanon.

Both Lebanese and Israeli security sources said they suspected the rockets were fired by a Palestinian group and not Hizbollah, a Shi'ite group instrumental in ending Israel's 22-year military occupation of southern Lebanon in 2000.

There was no immediate comment from any Palestinian groups in Lebanon. In Beirut, a Hizbollah spokesman had no information on the attack.

Palestinian militant groups have vowed revenge for Israel's killing of five Palestinians in a gunbattle in the West Bank town of Tulkarm on Wednesday.

Israel said its troops in Tulkarm had sought to arrest militants involved in suicide bomb attacks, but that a shootout ensued after the suspects refused to surrender.

Palestinians said only two of those killed were militants and three others were unarmed teenagers.

The most recent lethal clash at the Lebanon border was on June 30 when Israel said it killed a Hizbollah fighter in a helicopter strike near Kfar Shouba, a day after Hizbollah mortar and gunfire killed an Israeli officer in the Shebaa Farms area.

Source: REUTERS

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