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Lebanon: Israel Troops Fire Across Border

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

Israeli soldiers fired automatic rifles across the Lebanese-Israeli border Monday, hitting two cars and a house in this southern village, Lebanese security officials said. There were no injuries.

An Israeli Army spokesman contacted by The Associated Press denied that Israeli soldiers fired across the border Monday. An official of the U.N. peacekeepers who patrol along the Lebanese side of the border said there was a shooting incident and that it was investigating.

The shooting came amid heightened tensions in the region after Israeli warplanes on Sunday bombed an alleged Palestinian militant base in Syria, the first Israeli strike deep in Syria in three decades. Syria dominates its neighbor Lebanon and has strong influence over the Shiite Muslim guerrilla group Hezbollah in the border region.

Several bullets in Monday's shooting hit a house in Kfar Kila, but no residents were harmed, the security officials added.

A spokesman for Hezbollah also said he had heard reports of an incident but had no details.

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

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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