Hizbollah says abducts Israeli soldiers in raid

By Karamallah Daher

MARJAYOUN, Lebanon (Reuters) – Hizbollah guerrillas
abducted two Israeli soldiers in attacks from Lebanon on
Israeli border posts on Wednesday, Hizbollah television said.

Israel’s Channel 10 Television reported the army had said
two soldiers were missing from the border area.

An Israeli security source said at least two Israelis were
killed in the cross-border attacks by Hizbollah guerrillas. The
identities of the dead were not immediately clear and the
Israeli army had no immediate comment on casualties.

Confirmation of the Hizbollah report of the two abductions
would sharply escalate tensions in the Middle East. Israel has
already launched a major military offensive in the Gaza Strip
after Palestinian militants abducted a soldier on June 25 in a
cross-border raid.

“Fulfilling its pledge to liberate the (Arab) prisoners and
detainees, the Islamic Resistance … captured two Israeli
soldiers at the border with occupied Palestine,” Hizbollah said
in a statement.

“The two captives were transferred to a safe place.”

Asked about the reports, an Israeli army spokeswoman told
Reuters: “We do not confirm the reports, but there is a fear
they were abducted.”

Lebanese security sources said Israeli aircraft had bombed
a key bridge in southern Lebanon in response.

The Syrian-backed Hizbollah earlier fired dozens of
Katyusha rockets and mortar bombs at Israeli border posts and a
town, wounding four Israeli civilians, according to Israeli and
Lebanese security sources.

Israeli gunners retaliated, firing salvoes of artillery
shells into the outskirts of four Lebanese border villages
while Israeli soldiers exchanged gunfire with guerrillas in the
area.

The fighting apparently began when at least two rockets
fired from south Lebanon exploded near Shlomi, an Israeli
frontier town about 15 km (9 miles) east of the Mediterranean
coast.

In Gaza, Israel targeted Hamas’s top armed wing commanders
in an air strike on Wednesday that killed six Palestinians and
destroyed a three-storey building where the militants were
believed to be meeting.

The Israeli military said the attack wounded Mohammad Deif,
leader of the governing Hamas movement’s armed wing.

It coincided with an armored sweep into the central Gaza
Strip that broadened an offensive aimed at freeing the captured
soldier in Gaza, Corporal Gilad Shalit, and halting
cross-border rocket fire.

A spokesman for Hamas’s Izz el-Deen al-Qassam Brigades, one
of three groups whose kidnapping of Shalit led Israel to launch
its first ground operations in Gaza since quitting the
territory last year, denied Deif was hurt.

Israel has vowed to continue its Gaza operation, which has
already killed more than 65 Palestinians, until militants free
Shalit and stop launching makeshift rockets over the border.

Israel has rejected calls from Hamas for negotiations on a
prisoner swap for the 19-year-old tank gunner, whose abduction
has triggered the worst fighting between Israelis and
Palestinians since 2004.

(Additional reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza, Dan
Williams at Kissufim and Jeffrey Heller in Jerusalem)