December 28, 2005, 10:49 Politics

Lebanon and Israel exchange missiles

Anatoly Goldovsky Israel came under rocket fire from Lebanon on Wednesday night. Towards the morning, Israeli fighter jets responded by attacking a militant base near Beirut. It is still unknown which group started the shootout.

On the night of Tuesday to Wednesday, an exchange of missile strikes occurred between the Israeli military and certain militants in Lebanon. Late in the evening, two Katyusha rockets were fired at the city of Kiryat Shmona, located in northern Israel. One of the rockets hit a house, and the second damaged a power line, leaving Kiryat Shmona and the neighboring town of Shlomi without electricity. According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, there were no injuries - only three people in a state of shock sought medical help. People were so frightened by the rocket attack that they refused to leave the shelter several hours after the raid.

It has not yet been possible to identify the group that attacked northern Israel.

The Qatari TV channel Al-Jazeera reports that the missiles were fired by the Hezbollah group. But 2 hours after the incident, a representative of the organization categorically denied involvement in the night incident. The representative of the Fatah party in Lebanon, Sultan Abu Ainain, speaking on local television, assured that none of the Palestinian groups were involved in the night shelling.

Early in the morning, the Israeli Air Force retaliated by attacking a base used by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which is located 5 km from Beirut, from where the strikes on Kiryat Shmona were believed to have originated.

A military spokeswoman said there were no casualties so far, Reuters reported . However, the militants themselves, who also deny their involvement in the night rocket attack, say two were wounded. The planes are also reported to have fired two missiles at one of the buildings in the camp.

The Israeli military blames the Lebanese authorities for the attack on Kiryat Shmon. “Israel has the right to protect its citizens. The Lebanese government has an obligation to eliminate terrorist groups,” she said. “If Lebanon does not solve the problem of shelling, we will,” added the commander of Israel’s Northern Military District, Udi Adam, a little later. Meanwhile, Beirut has not yet commented on the night shootout.

It is possible that the night attack on Israel is connected with a statement by Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas - on Tuesday evening he called for an end to rocket attacks on Israeli territories.

He made this call at a meeting with representatives of paramilitary Palestinian groups in Gaza. As the BBC television company notes, observers associate this statement with pressure exerted on him by Israel ahead of the upcoming parliamentary elections in January.

Meanwhile, the Islamic Jihad group (an organization banned in Russia) has already rejected Abbas’s call, explaining that it is Israel that provokes the escalation of violence. “We believe that continued resistance is in the interests of the Palestinian people,” a representative of the group is confident, reports the Associated Press .

The shelling of Israel's northern territories has become more frequent after the withdrawal of Israeli settlements from the Gaza Strip in August-September of this year. This Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon , returning from the hospital where he was recovering from a stroke, announced the need to create a buffer zone in the north of the Gaza Strip. “Everything must be done to prevent Palestinian militants from acting against us, this is my policy and my order,” the prime minister said at a cabinet meeting.

Israel withdrew its troops from southern Lebanon in 2000. Since then, the situation on the border has generally stabilized, although it remains quite tense.