SIDON (AFP) - Israeli aircraft fired on Hizbullah strongholds after two pro-Israeli militiamen were lightly wounded in a Hizbullah mortar attack in southern Lebanon.
The two South Lebanon Army militiamen were at an Israeli army position in the central sector of Israel's self-declared "security zone" in south Lebanon when they came under a hail of mortar fire, military sources in Israel said.
Lebanese police said that Israeli fighter-bombers fired two missiles around the village of Majdel Silm at 4:30 p.m.. The village is across from the central sector of the occupied zone.
Half an hour earlier, Israeli planes fired two missiles on the Iqlim al-Tuffah heights southeast of Sidon, the main city in southern Lebanon, police said. Neither raid apparently caused any casualties.
The Israeli raids followed a series of attacks on Israeli and SLA patrols and forts on the edge of the central part of the zone. The Iranian-, Lebanese- and Syrian-backed Hizbullah said it had carried out five attacks by mid-afternoon, and had hit its targets.
The Muslim Hizbullah has stepped up the number of its attacks in the zone in the past three days after a period of relative calm following the killing of an Israeli soldier February 11.
In reaction, the Israeli delegation walked out of a meeting of an international panel set to discuss Israel's February 8 air attacks that knocked out power to much of the country and wounded 22 civilians.
Those raids were in retaliation for Hizbullah's killing of five Israeli soldiers and the SLA's deputy commander in southern Lebanon.
