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Israelis Fire Across Lebanon Border

Posted on: Monday, 6 October 2003, 06:00 CDT

Israeli soldiers fired automatic rifles across the Lebanese-Israeli border Monday, hitting two Lebanese cars but causing no injuries, Lebanese security officials said.

Several bullets also hit a house on the Lebanese side of the border in the southern village of Kfar Kila, but no residents were harmed, the security officials added on condition of anonymity.

The reported incident comes amid heightened tensions between Israel and Syria, Lebanon's close ally, following Israel's air raid Sunday on what the Jewish state said was a Palestinian militant base.

There was no immediate comment from Israeli officials.

An official of the U.N. Interim Force In Lebanon, a peacekeeping force that regularly sends patrols along the border on the Lebanese side of the frontier, said there was a shooting incident and that it was investigating.

It was unclear what prompted the shooting on a road that abuts the fence separating Lebanon from Israel.

A spokesman for Hezbollah, the anti-Israeli militant Lebanese guerrilla group active in south Lebanon, also said he had heard reports of an incident but had no details.

Shootings on the edge of this border town, some 100 kilometers (60 miles) southeast of Beirut, have been rare since Israeli troops withdrew from south Lebanon in 2000 following their 18-year occupation.

The area is generally calm, unlike the contested Chebaa Farms to the east were shootouts between Israeli border guards and Hezbollah guerrillas occasionally flare into artillery and rocket exchanges, sometimes prompting Israeli air strikes.

Lebanese security officials and soldiers who arrived at the scene after the shooting at sundown said Israeli soldiers patrolling a road on the Israeli side of the electrified border fence fired at two vehicles, a sedan and a passenger mini van.

One of the Lebanese vehicles fired on was pockmarked by bullets but apparently not seriously damaged, the security officials said.

Israeli soldiers yelled at reporters and Lebanese soldiers who arrived at the scene about an hour after the shooting and ordered them to leave the area.

One of the Lebanese soldiers replied, "This is Lebanese territory. We are not leaving," according to an Associated Press reporter at the scene

Israeli soldiers shouted back in Arabic, "Go away before we shoot you," the reporter who witnessed the argument said.

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