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Hizbollah says abducts Israeli soldiers in raid

Posted on: Wednesday, 12 July 2006, 03:34 CDT

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)

Source: REUTERS

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