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MARJAYOUN, April 20 (AFP)-A soldier with Israel's allied South Lebanon Army (SLA) was killed Thursday in the latest surge of tit-for-tat attacks in the Israeli-occupied zone of southern Lebanon. Two SLA men and two Israeli troops were also wounded in various incidents, and the Shi’a Hizbullah group confirmed Israeli reports that two of its men were killed on Wednesday night in a clash with Israeli troops. The SLA said in the first incident Thursday a blast went off as one of its patrols was making its rounds about one kilometer (half a mile) from the international border, killing one soldier and injuring another. It said shrapnel later injured another of its men when a mortar fell on the SLA position of Sweida on the edge of the central sector of the occupied zone. Hizbullah, which spearheads the fight against Israel and the SLA, according to the report said it had carried out both attacks. The group also issued a statement claiming responsibility for an attack by remote-control bomb on an Israeli patrol close to the international frontier. Security sources in the zone said the blast hit an Israeli position, injuring two Israeli troops who they said had to be evacuated by helicopter. Hizbullah also confirmed that two of its fighters were killed in a clash with Israeli troops near the village of Taibeh inside the occupied zone during the night. An Israeli army spokesperson said earlier in Jerusalem that one of its units had come upon a unit of commando "terrorists" and opened fire, killing two of them. Seventeen SLA men have been killed and 31 wounded so far this year in southern Lebanon, where Israel has pledged to end its 22-year occupation by July. Seven Israelis have been killed and 20 injured in the same period, while the death toll for the anti-Israeli movement is nine, seven of them belonging to Hizbullah. |
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