Israeli jets blasted a Palestinian militant group's base in Lebanon early yesterday, lightly wounding two guerrillas, hours after rockets hit a northern Israeli border town.
In their deepest strike into Lebanon in 18 months, the Israeli planes attacked a base south of Beirut of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, a small, Syrian-backed group that has been fighting the Jewish state for decades.
"This is in response to the firing of projectile rockets last night toward Israeli communities," the Israeli military said, referring to the attack on the northern Israeli town of Kiryat Shmona that damaged property but did not inflict casualties.
PHOTO: AP
The Israeli military said it viewed such attacks with "extreme severity" and held Lebanon responsible.
Later yesterday, Israeli warplanes flew low over southern Lebanon and the western Bekaa Valley in presumed reconnaissance flights that drew anti-aircraft fire from the Lebanese army, Lebanese security officials said.
Major General Udi Adam, head of the Israeli army's northern command, warned Israel would retaliate if there were any more rocket fire from Lebanon.
"The main message that we passed, and we are trying to give, is that the Lebanese government must take responsibility for what happens in its territory," Adam said.
"If Kiryat Shmona residents don't sleep quietly, then the residents of Beirut won't sleep quietly. This is an unequivocal message."
Witnesses reported warplanes roared over the PFLP-GC guerrilla base at Naameh, a hilltop base overlooking the Mediterranean 7km south of Beirut, and the sound of two booms were heard.
Lebanese army troops at a checkpoint near Naameh confirmed the airstrike and sealed off the area.
The PFLP-GC commander in Lebanon, Anwar Raja, said that two guerrillas were slightly wounded in the strike, which caused "limited" material damage and shattered the windows of nearby houses.
He denied that the PFLP-GC was responsible for the firing of Katyushas on northern Israel.
A photographer at the site said that the strike targeted an entrance to a tunnel, leaving it almost blocked by stones and rubble. The PFLP-GC base consists of a maze of concrete fortified tunnels in a hill.
Israeli warplanes struck the same base in June last year in retaliation for a rocket attack on an Israeli naval boat. Jets also staged a "mock raid" -- low runs without dropping bombs -- on the same base a month later.
Yesterday's air raid was the second on Naameh since the Israeli troop withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000.
The airstrike was launched after three rockets landed in a residential area of Kiryat Shmona. The Israeli army said the rockets damaged some property but caused no injuries.
Lebanon's Hezbollah militant group and the mainstream Fatah Palestinian faction denied involvement in firing late Tuesday on Kiryat Shmona.
It was not clear whether the explosions were caused by katyusha rockets or mortar fire, but Israel's Channel Two television showed the remains of what appeared to be a katyusha, along with pictures of holes in the ground and in the side of a home.
Last month, Israeli fighter jets attacked a command post of the Hezbollah guerrilla group in south Lebanon -- a day after Hezbollah rocket and mortar attacks wounded 11 Israeli soldiers and damaged a house in an Israeli border community.
While fighting on the Lebanon-Israel border has dropped since the Israeli troop withdrawal in 2000, the area remains tense and Hezbollah frequently targets Israeli troops in the disputed Chebaa Farms area. But attacks on Israelis also were blamed on radical Palestinian groups, who remains active in southern Lebanon.
The PFLP-GC's commander, Ahmed Jibril, whose group refuses to recognize Israel, has his headquarters in Damascus. But his group maintains military bases in Lebanon, where it is accused of taking orders from Syria in support of its policies in Lebanon.
Relations between the two Arab neighbors have been tense in recent months after the Syrian army withdrew from Lebanon after international pressure and street protests in Beirut in the aftermath of the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri.
DEATH CONSTANTLY LOOMING: Decades of detention took a major toll on Iwao Hakamada’s mental health, his lawyers describing him as ‘living in a world of fantasy’ A Japanese man wrongly convicted of murder who was the world’s longest-serving death row inmate has been awarded US$1.44 million in compensation, an official said yesterday. The payout represents ￥12,500 (US$83) for each day of the more than four decades that Iwao Hakamada spent in detention, most of it on death row when each day could have been his last. It is a record for compensation of this kind, Japanese media said. The former boxer, now 89, was exonerated last year of a 1966 quadruple murder after a tireless campaign by his sister and others. The case sparked scrutiny of the justice system in
The head of Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, was sacked yesterday, days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he no longer trusts him, and fallout from a report on the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack. “The Government unanimously approved Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposal to end ISA Director Ronen Bar’s term of office,” a statement said. He is to leave his post when his successor is appointed by April 10 at the latest, the statement said. Netanyahu on Sunday cited an “ongoing lack of trust” as the reason for moving to dismiss Bar, who joined the agency in 1993. Bar, meant to
Indonesia’s parliament yesterday amended a law to allow members of the military to hold more government roles, despite criticisms that it would expand the armed forces’ role in civilian affairs. The revision to the armed forces law, pushed mainly by Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto’s coalition, was aimed at expanding the military’s role beyond defense in a country long influenced by its armed forces. The amendment has sparked fears of a return to the era of former Indonesian president Suharto, who ex-general Prabowo once served and who used military figures to crack down on dissent. “Now it’s the time for us to ask the
‘HUMAN NEGLIGENCE’: The fire is believed to have been caused by someone who was visiting an ancestral grave and accidentally started the blaze, the acting president said Deadly wildfires in South Korea worsened overnight, officials said yesterday, as dry, windy weather hampered efforts to contain one of the nation’s worst-ever fire outbreaks. More than a dozen different blazes broke out over the weekend, with Acting South Korean Interior and Safety Minister Ko Ki-dong reporting thousands of hectares burned and four people killed. “The wildfires have so far affected about 14,694 hectares, with damage continuing to grow,” Ko said. The extent of damage would make the fires collectively the third-largest in South Korea’s history. The largest was an April 2000 blaze that scorched 23,913 hectares across the east coast. More than 3,000
RSS