Residents on both sides of the Israeli-Lebanese border spent last night braced for further military hostilities, after a weekend of escalating fighting. Further south, on a more familiar hostile front in the West Bank, Israeli soldiers shot dead two Palestinians who were allegedly laying a roadside bomb near an army base.
The fighting on the Lebanese border began on Friday, when Hizbullah gunmen injured two Israeli soldiers, one of them seriously, in an attack at the disputed Sheba Farms area - the one region of the border where Lebanon claims Israel is illegally occupying its territory. Yesterday, Israel hit back with aircraft destroying a Syrian army radar station south of Baalbek in the Bekaa Valley, where most of Syria's 25,000-30,000 troops in Lebanon are stationed. Three Syrian soldiers were reported injured. After that, Hizbullah fighters and Israeli soldiers exchanged cross-border fire for more than an hour. A Lebanese farmer was reported injured. The Hizbullah leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, threatened a further reaction "that will be different from everything that has gone before".
Yesterday's Israeli raid was the second on a Syrian target in Lebanon in the space of two months, and reflected a new Israeli policy of demonstratively holding Damascus responsible for Hizbullah attacks. Israel pulled all of its soldiers out of Lebanon in May of last year, and Israel's Defence Minister, Mr Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, has said he is determined to prevent the fighting that preceded that withdrawal from spreading across the border into Israel. Speaking after the Israeli raid, Mr Ben-Eliezer said that he could "hardly imagine that Hizbullah would carry out an attack without Syria's blessing". Since Israel, he added, had no desire to harm the Lebanese, it would again be targeting Syrian positions if attacked. The West Bank violence came in the Jenin area, where Israeli soldiers said they spotted five Palestinians attempting to lay a roadside bomb near an army base and opened fire, killing two.
Hamas said that the two men, Mahmoud Suleiman Khalil and Jamal Deifollah Hassan, were its fighters. In Gaza, meanwhile, a teenage Palestinian boy died from bullet wounds to the neck, sustained in clashes with Israeli troops at an Israel-Gaza border-crossing on Friday.
Despite such violence the Palestinian Authority President, Mr Yasser Arafat, is insisting that a seven-day "cessation of fighting" period, which is to precede further steps towards renewed peace talks, is now in progress. Israel's Prime Minister, Mr Ariel Sharon, is adamant, however, that it will not begin until all violence is halted.
An Israeli helicopter gunship killed three Palestinian militants in an attack late last night on their car in the West Bank, Palestinian security officials said. An Israeli army spokesman declined to comment. The Palestinian security officials said the three men killed, Mohammed Besharat, Sameh Nuri Abu Hameish and Walid Sudki Besharat, were members of Islamic Jihad.