Israeli planes strike Palestinian bases in Lebanon

By Shawki al-Hajj

LUCI, Lebanon (Reuters) – Israeli planes attacked two bases
run by a Syrian-backed Palestinian faction in Lebanon on
Sunday, killing one Palestinian fighter, hours after rockets
fired into northern Israel wounded an Israeli soldier.

Witnesses saw black smoke rising from a military base just
outside Beirut and another in the eastern Bekaa Valley, both
run by the Popular Front for the Liberation of
Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC) which is based in Damascus.

A PFLP-GC official in Lebanon said one fighter was killed
and several were wounded at a base consisting of tunnels dug
into a hillside near the eastern town of Luci, close to the
Syrian border. Two Palestinian militants were slightly wounded
in the attack on the group’s Naameh bunker near Beirut, he
said.

Palestinian militants at Luci fired automatic rifles and
anti-aircraft guns at the planes, while the Lebanese army said
its anti-aircraft units responded to the Naameh attack.

Israel confirmed the air raids and said one of the bunkers
was used as an arms store.

“Following the (rocket) attack today, we responded with air
strikes against two terrorist targets in Lebanon. One of the
targets was used to store weapons and ammunition,” an Israeli
army spokesman said.

The exchange took place two days after a senior Islamic
Jihad official and his brother were killed in southern Lebanon
when their car blew up in a blast blamed by the Palestinian
group on Israel.

Lebanon’s Hizbollah guerrilla group, which controls the
Lebanese side of the border, also blamed Israel for the car
blast in the port of Sidon, and Islamic Jihad vowed revenge.

ISRAEL TO COMPLAINT

It was not clear who fired the rockets into northern Israel
on Sunday. Hizbollah, which has attacked Israeli posts in a
disputed border zone since Israel ended its 22-year occupation
of southern Lebanon in 2000, had no immediate comment.

The group, backed by Iran and Syria, said this week that it
had thousands of rockets able to hit any target in northern
Israel should the Jewish state attack Lebanese territory again.

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said Israel
planned to lodge a complaint with the U.N. Security Council
over the rocket attack, which hit the town of Safed.

“This attack demonstrates clearly the need to move
expeditiously in implementing U.N. Security Council resolutions
1559 and 1680 that call for the disarming of all the armed
militia in Lebanon,” Regev said. “As long as these extremist
groups remain armed, they will be a threat to stability.”

Lebanese politicians agreed at national talks this year to
disarm Syrian-backed Palestinian groups that run a series of
military bases outside the country’s 12 squalid refugee camps.

The Lebanese government has initiated talks with the
Palestinian groups but they have yet to make tangible progress.

The top PFLP-GC official in Lebanon, Anwar Raja, said
Palestinian commandos were based in the Luci bunker, which has
existed for about 30 years, and the attacks showed that Lebanon
and the Palestinians remained threatened by Israel.

“Israel used the rockets that were fired into northern
Israel as a pretext to assault Lebanese sovereignty. This
reveals the dangers that the Lebanese and Palestinians face
from Israel,” he told Reuters.

(Additional reporting by Lin Noueihed in Beirut, Afif Diab
in Luci, Khaled Oweis in Damascus and Jerusalem bureau)