TAYR HARFA, Lebanon, August 10 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - Israeli warplanes attacked southern Lebanon, hours after cross-border fire with Hizbullah resistance group that left one Israeli killed on Sunday, August 10.

"Two Israeli planes at 4:30 pm (1330 GMT) fired two missiles at a hill in Tayr Harfa," near the coastal town of Naqura close to the border, a police officer told Agence France-Presse (AFP).

This escalation comes after last week's assassination of a Hizbullah official when a bomb ripped apart his car south of Beirut Saturday, August 2. Hezbollah, blaming Israel for the assassination, vowed revenge.

Public radio named the dead Israeli as 16-year-old Habib Dadon, while medical sources said one of the five wounded in the north-western Israeli town of Shlomi was in serious condition.

Israeli medical and army sources say Hizbullah deliberately fired shells into the town of Shlomi, in northern Israel.

But representatives for the organization said their anti-aircraft guns were aimed at Israeli planes violating Lebanese airspace.

Although the border had been generally quiet since the beginning of the year, tensions have worsened recently with a number of incidents since Friday.

The flare-up came as Israel was already stepping up pressure on Syria and Lebanon to end their support for the Hizbullah resistance group, and was considering seeking a special meeting of the U.N. Security Council on the situation.

"This is a clear provocation by Hizbullah and Israel will not sit idly by," Israeli government spokesman Avi Pazner said.

"We consider Hizbullah and those who support it as entirely responsible for the situation," he added, in a reference to Syria and Iran.

Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom had warned before the Sunday attack that any casualties in one of Hizbullah's border attacks would trigger a tough response.

"If our citizens are hit we will have to defend them, and Syria and Lebanon would be well advised not to put us to the challenge," he told public radio without mentioning Israel’s last week assassination of a Hizbullah official, Ali Hassan Saleh, in Beirut that triggered the flares.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was to discuss the situation at the northern border with security officials Sunday night, Israeli public radio reported.

Because Damascus holds the rotating chairmanship of the Security Council, Syrian ambassador Mikhail Wehbe is not allowed to answer the protest.

The United Nations has not been Israel's favorite turf, but following U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan's unequivocal condemnation of Friday's attack, the foreign ministry was mulling demanding an emergency meeting of the Security Council be convened.

"For the first time, Annan has mentioned a provocation against Israel emanating from an Arab country, and we are assessing the impact of this new stance on U.N. member countries," said David Granit, an Israeli foreign ministry official in charge of relations with the U.N.

He was referring to a statement Friday in which Annan said he was "very concerned at the exchanges of fire across the Blue Line in Southern Lebanon, initiated from Lebanese territory."

Lebanon hit back with its own complaint to the U.N. Sunday against Israeli "aggression, threats and continuous provocative violations of Lebanese airspace and sovereignty," a senior foreign ministry official in Beirut said.

And Hizbullah's chief for south Lebanon, Sheikh Nabil Qauq, said the group will keep up attacks on the Shebaa Farms and fire at Israeli warplanes.

"Let America get angry and let Israel complain to whoever it wants," he said.

Hizbullah says that Israel must withdraw from the area of the Shebaa farms - which lies on Lebanese territory - or face continued attacks.

On May 24, 2000, Hizbullah resistance attacks forced Israel to withdraw its troops from a large territory in southern Lebanon which it had been occupying since 1978.

A significant issue relating to the withdrawal remains unsettled, namely the status of certain villages and adjacent land on the eastern side of Alsheikh Mountain, known as the “Shebaa Farms”, which have been occupied by Israel since 1967.

The Lebanese government confirmed to the United Nations that the area is part and parcel of the Lebanese territory and that any Israeli withdrawal must encompass it.