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Hizbollah Deters Israeli Jets Violating Lebanon Airspace
TYRE,
Lebanon, Jan. 31 (IslamOnline & News Agencies)- Lebanese
Hizbollah resistance movement opened fire Thursday on Israeli jet
fighters violating the country's airspace in the south, Lebanese
police and Hizbollah sources said.
“The
air defense unit of the Islamic resistance challenged Israeli
warplanes that violated Lebanese airspace over the western end of
south Lebanon,” Hizbollah said in a statement carried by news
agencies
Anti-aircraft
guns fired at two Israeli fighter-bombers overflying the region,
including the port city of Tyre, police said.
Witness in the village of Teir Dibba near the coastal city of Tyre
heard anti-aircraft fire as the plane swooped overhead and saw a
shell smash into the ground near the houses.
In
the Lebanese border town of Kfar Shouba, witnesses said that Israeli
troops opened machinegun fire at the edge of the town and shelled a
hilltop near the Shebaa farms border zones, news agencies reported.
There
were no reports of causalities. It is not stated whether the
projectile of Hizbollah has been shot from the ground or the air.
Israel
denied, however, it retaliated to Hizbollah anti-aircraft guns.
“We have not retaliated for the anti-aircraft fire,” an Israeli
army spokesman said.
On
Wednesday, January 23, Hizbollah rockets and mortars pounded Israeli
army positions in the Shebaa Farms area in south Lebanon, prompting
Israeli air and ground retaliatory strikes.
The
attacks, the first by Hizbollah in three months, were perceived as
an end to its de facto truce and a sign it would not stand by in the
face of Israel's atrocities against the Palestinians.
The
United Nations has condemned continued Israeli violation of Lebanese
airspace. It considers Israeli violations as breaches of the
"blue line", which was demarcated after the Israelis
pulled out of southern Lebanon.
Meanwhile,
Beirut rejected Thursday U.S. President George W. Bush's terrorism
accusations against Hizbollah, insisting that the group was a
resistance movement fighting the Israeli occupation.
"Lebanon's
point of view regarding Hizbollah and the resistance is a well known
invariable position," Foreign Minister Mahmud Hammud told
Agence France Presse (AFP), commenting on Bush's State of the Union
speech.
In
his address to Congress Tuesday, January 29, Bush spoke of an
"axis of evil" comprising Iran, Iraq and North Korea,
warning that they could become targets in the U.S. so called
"war on terrorism."
Bush
also promised to hunt the "terrorist underworld -- including
groups like Hamas, Hizbollah, Islamic Jihad, Jaish-e-Mohammed --
[which] operates in remote jungles and deserts, and hides in the
centers of large cities."
In
a statement on Wednesday, January 30, Hizbollah said it was not
intimidated by Bush's accusations, which it said were an attempt to
"terrorize the people of the region in coordination with the
Zionist entity," AFP reported.
After
the September 11 attacks on the United States, Washington included
Hizbollah on a blacklist of terrorist organizations whose assets are
to be frozen.
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