Two Israeli soldiers killed as Hezbollah missile hits vehicle on Lebanon border

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/28/israel-missile-lebanon-syria-hezbollah

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Two Israeli soldiers were killed when a military vehicle was hit by an anti-tank missile fired from inside Lebanon amid rapidly mounting tensions on the country’s northern border with Lebanon and Syria.

Four soldiers were reportedly wounded and the vehicle was set on fire in the incident, which took place at about 11.30am on Wednesday near Har Dov mountain. Hezbollah claimed responsibility. A UN peacekeeping soldier was killed in southern Lebanon after being injured by Israeli shellfire in response to the attack.

As residents living along Israel’s northern border were ordered to stay indoors, Israel emphatically denied claims that one of its soldiers had been kidnapped by Hezbollah during the attack.

Although the two Israeli soldiers were not named they were identified as being a company commander and an infantryman. Television footage and photographs from the scene of the attack showed two burning Israeli vehicles and images of soldiers treating wounded colleagues.

The soldiers were travelling in an unarmoured vehicle when it was hit by the missile. A few hours later it was announced that a Spanish peacekeeper serving with the Unifil monitoring mission in southern Lebanon had died after the Israeli response.

He was later named by El Mundo as Francisco Javier Soria Toledo, aged 36, from Málaga.

Following the attack Israel’s foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, who was meeting China’s foreign minister in Beijing, called on Israel to respond in a “forceful and disproportionate manner”.

There have been a series of cross-border exchanges in the last 24 hours between Israeli forces and fighters in Syria and Lebanon, including members of Hezbollah.

An hour after the anti-tank missile attack, mortars were fired on Israeli military positions on Har Dov mountain and Mount Hermon. Israel responded by firing at least 50 artillery shells into Lebanon.

The United Nations later confirmed that the peacekeeper had been killed in southern Lebanon during the border clashes.

According to Israeli military sources, the Israeli vehicle was travelling in a convoy with others when it was struck at close range.

In a statement, Hezbollah said its fighters destroyed a number of Israeli vehicles that were carrying Israeli officers and soldiers, and caused casualties among “enemy ranks”.

Describing the incident as “serious”, a spokesman said Israel reserved the right to respond against Hezbollah and the governments of Syria and Lebanon.

The Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, cut short a visit to Sderot, close to the Gaza border, to be briefed by senior security officials in Tel Aviv. Before leaving, he told reporters: “I suggest that all those who are challenging us on our northern border, look at what happened in Gaza, not far from the city of Sderot. Hamas suffered the most serious blow since it was founded this past summer and the IDF is prepared to act on every front.”

Wednesday’s incident came only hours after Israeli jets hit several targets inside Syria. The shells struck near Wazzani village.

Tensions have been mounting on Israel’s northern border for months but have escalated sharply in the last week and a half after an Israeli strike near the Syrian border town of Quneitra killed an Iranian general and a senior Hezbollah commander who were travelling in a convoy of several cars.

Both Hezbollah and Iran have threatened retaliation for that attack.

On Tuesday afternoon, two missiles landed in the Israeli occupied area of the Golan Heights, which saw Israel return fire with artillery before the air strikes were launched under the cover of darkness.

Moshe Ya’alon, the Israeli defence minister, warned: “The IDF holds the Syrian government accountable for all attacks emanating from its land and will operate by any means necessary to defend Israeli civilians. Such blatant breaches of Israeli sovereignty will not be tolerated.”

Despite the sharp escalation in violence in the past 24 hours, analysts pointed out that Hezbollah had chosen to carry out its attack in revenge for the killing of one of its commanders and an Iranian general in the occupied Shebaa Farms area, suggesting it might want to limit the fallout from the attack.

The latest cross-border exchanges – the most serious since the war in Syria began – came as the Israeli military launched a search for tunnels it believes Lebanese Hezbollah fighters may have dug, a military source said. Residents in the area, bombarded by Hezbollah rockets for a month in 2006, have been reporting noises underground and fear they may come from tunnels being dug.

“We are making checks on the ground following residents’ concerns. We have no intelligence indicating Hezbollah has dug a tunnel, but anything is possible,” the source said. “It is the first time we are conducting a search on this scale.”

Israeli officials have said Hezbollah was too embroiled in the Syrian civil war, fighting alongside forces loyal to the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, against rebels and jihadis trying to topple him, to launch a large-scale war against Israel in the near future.

But in preparation for possible future conflict, a senior intelligence officer told Reuters last month that Hezbollah was working to expand its tactics to include fighters launching raids on Israeli territory.