Three dead as Lebanese Hizbullah and Israeli troops clash

Two Israeli soldiers and a Spanish peacekeeper were killed on Wednesday in an exchange of fire between Hizbullah and Israel that has raised the threat of a full-blown conflict between the two.

In the biggest escalation since a 2006 war, the soldiers were killed when Hizbullah fired a missile at a convoy of Israeli military vehicles on the frontier with Lebanon.

The peacekeeper, serving with a UN monitoring force in southern Lebanon, was killed as Israel responded with air strikes and artillery fire, a UN spokesman and Spanish officials said.

Retaliation attack

Hizbullah said one of its brigades in the area had carried out the attack, which appeared to be in retaliation for a January 18th Israeli air strike in southern Syria that killed several members of the Islamist militant group and an Iranian general.

Tensions in the region, where the frontiers of Israel, Lebanon and Syria meet and militant groups opposed to Syrian president Bashar al-Assad are active, have been bubbling for months but have boiled over in the past 10 days.

The Israeli military confirmed the death of the soldiers, who were driving along a road next to the fence that marks the hilly frontier. Hospital officials said a further seven had been wounded.

Andrea Tenenti, spokesman for the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (Unifil), which employs more than 10,000 troops, said the peacekeeper's death was under investigation.

Further destabilisation

The UN special coordinator for Lebanon urged all parties to refrain from any further destabilisation of the situation, while Lebanon’s prime minister said his country was committed to the UN resolution that ended the 2006 war.

The 80 km frontier has largely been quiet since 2006, when Hizbullah and Israel fought a 34-day war in which 120 people in Israel and more than 500 in Lebanon were killed.

Since the end of the war with Hamas militants in Gaza last year, Israel has warned of frictions on the northern border, including the possibility that Hizbullah might dig tunnels to infiltrate Israel. In recent days it has moved more troops and military equipment into the area.

Rising threat

A retired Israeli army officer, Major-General Israel Ziv, said he believed Wednesday’s assault was an attempt by Hizbullah to draw Israel more deeply into the war in Syria, where Hizbullah is fighting alongside forces loyal to Assad.

“Israel needs to protect its interests but not take any unnecessary steps that may pull us into the conflict in Syria,” he said.

Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who faces a parliamentary election on March 17th, said Israel was “prepared to act powerfully on all fronts”, adding: “Security comes before everything else.”

Reuters