Hezbollah Ambushed Intruding Israeli Soldiers, Group's Chief Says [View all]

[Purveyor]

An incident Aug. 7 in which four Israeli soldiers were injured near the border with Lebanon was no accident, as some reports have said, according to Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.

By Patrick J. McDonnell
August 17, 2013, 4:00 p.m.

BEIRUT— It was an incident shrouded in mystery that occurred in one of the Middle East's most sensitive areas: the "Blue Line" demarcating the frontier between southern Lebanon and northern Israel.

Shortly after midnight on Aug. 7, four Israel soldiers were wounded along the United Nations-designated line, which for the most part has been quiet since Israel and Hezbollah forces fought a monthlong war in 2006.

After the incident, Israel issued a vague and terse statement saying its soldiers had suffered light to moderate injuries when an "explosion" occurred "during an overnight activity adjacent to the northern border." Israeli officials did not say whether the mission was a training, combat or intelligence-gathering operation.

The Lebanese army denounced what it said was a violation of its nation's sovereignty, charging that an Israeli infantry patrol had moved about 400 yards into Lebanese territory before the blast occurred. Some reports speculated that the Israelis had triggered a land mine, one of many left over from the brief but bloody 2006 conflict.

Last week, however, Hezbollah's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, said in a televised interview that the incident was not a case of Israeli infantrymen inadvertently setting off old ordnance. Rather, Nasrallah labeled it a well-planned ambush by "the resistance," as the militant Islamist group calls itself, after it received intelligence about an Israeli operation near the Lebanese village of Labbouneh.

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http://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-fg-lebanon-blue-line-20130818,0,464557.story