Nazir Majally • Arab News Staff

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 11 August 2003 — An Israeli was killed and five were hurt yesterday in what Israel claimed was the second border attack in three days by Hezbollah. The Lebanese group said it fired anti-aircraft guns at Israeli planes violating Lebanese airspace.

Israeli warplanes raided south Lebanon in response.

The incidents came as Israel was already stepping up pressure on Syria and Lebanon to end their support for Hezbollah, and was considering seeking a special meeting of the UN Security Council.

Israeli public radio named the victim as 16-year-old Habib Dadon and according to medical sources, one of the five Israelis wounded in the northwestern border town of Shlomi was in serious condition.

Two Israelis were wounded by falling anti-aircraft fire in July, but Israeli military sources insisted that Hezbollah fired 57mm artillery rounds yesterday in a deliberate attack on Israeli territory.

“This is a clear provocation by Hezbollah and Israel will not sit idly by,” Israeli government spokesman Avi Pazner said. “We consider Hezbollah and those who support it as entirely responsible for the situation,” he added.

Lebanese police said two Israeli warplanes mounted a raid on the source of the Hezbollah attack four hours later, firing two missiles at a hill in Tayr Harfa, close to the border. Israeli military sources, revising an earlier account that the raid was carried out by helicopters, said the planes destroyed the gun used by Hezbollah fighters to fire the shells.

“Zionist planes attacked the outskirts of the village of Tayr Harfa in south Lebanon,” Al-Manar television said in a news flash. The station later reported a second strike in the nearby Tellat Al-Kharba area.

Witnesses said they heard the sound of several explosions in the area and that Israeli troops had also shot five shells from a disputed border zone into the outskirts of the southern Kfar Shouba town, prompting residents to flee their homes in fear.

They said Israeli planes and helicopters had been flying over south Lebanon all morning and continued their overflights into Lebanese territory after the airstrikes.

A spokesman for the United Nations peacekeeping force UNIFIL said he was investigating the exchange of fire from both sides of the border.

Hezbollah said it will keep up attacks on the disputed Sheba Farms area on the border with Israel and fire at Israeli warplanes. “The resistance is capable of responding to Israel’s violations and provocations,” said the Hezbollah chief for south Lebanon, Sheikh Nabil Qauq, referring to almost daily violations of Lebanese airspace. “We want to stop Israeli planes from continuing to violate our sovereignty and make such violations costly for the Israeli military command,” Qauq said.

He also defied Israeli and US protests, stressing the group’s fighters would continue attacks in the Sheba Farms area, which Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 Middle East war but is claimed by Beirut with the consent of Damascus.

“Our last attack provoked the anger of the US administration... which proves we are on the right track. We have never sought to please America and we will not do so,” said the Hezbollah chief. “Let America get angry and let Israel complain to whoever it wants.”