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Two Israeli Soldiers and UN Peacekeeper Killed Near Lebanese Border

Hizbullah Says Attack in Retaliation for Israel’s Killing of Six Gunmen

At least two Israeli soldiers were killed and seven others wounded, several seriously, when a Hizbullah anti-tank missile hit the unarmored vehicle they were traveling in. A Spanish UN peacekeeper was also killed, apparently from an Israeli air strike on south Lebanon after the Hizbullah attack. Lebanese security officials said Israel fired 25 artillery shells into Lebanon after the soldiers were killed.

Hizbullah claimed responsibility for the attack on the Israeli convoy. The group which took responsibility for the attack called themselves “the Heroic Martyrs of Quneitra”, in reference to the area Israel where Israel attacked a Hizbullah convoy last week. That attack killed six Hizbullah gunmen, including Jihad Mughniyeh, the son of senior Hizbullah official Imad Mughniyeh, who was allegedly assassinated by Israel in 2008. That strike also killed a senior Iranian general, raising tensions in the area.

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu vowed to respond to the Hizbullah attack “with force,” and warned Hizbullah to look at Israel’s offensive in the Gaza Strip last summer as an example.
 
“At this moment, the IDF is responding to events in the north. To everyone who is trying to challenge us at the northern border, I recommend for them look what happened there, not far from the city of Sderot, in Gaza. Hamas took its hardest hit since its formation and the IDF is prepared to act strongly on all fronts,” Netanyahu said at a ceremony in the southern city of Sderot.

Netanyahu later added, “Security comes before all else. Security is the foundation for everything."
It was the most serious flare-up of violence between Israel and Hizbullah in several years. Analysts said that while neither Hizbullah nor Israel wants a war, they could get dragged into one. A similar situation occurred in 2006, when Hizbullah captured two Israeli soldiers on the border, which led to a war.

With the events on the southern border, Lebanese took to social media with fear that the altercation would be a repeat of 2006.
 
Dr. Haytham Mouzahem, a Lebanese political analyst, said that it is too early to tell. “We have to wait and see,” he told The Media Line. “It seems to be retaliation for the attack in Golan last week but we have to see if they will attack other areas like Dahiyeh [the southern suburbs of Beirut and a Hizbullah stronghold].”
 
Kamel Wazne, a Lebanese analyst, told Medialine that Hezbollah would most likely respect the Lebanese government, and not fire on Israel from within Lebanon. The attack on the Israeli convoy was done from a contested border area between Lebanon and Syria.

Lebanon is already suffering water and electricity shortages and is struggling to cope with the flood of Syrian refugees. The United Nations says there are well over one million refugees amid Lebanon’s population of four million.

Hizbullah released a statement, the first of what is expected to be many, reading: “At 11:25the Qunaitra Martyrs unit used missiles to target an Israeli military convoy comprising several vehicles with Zionist officers and soldiers causing the destruction of several vehicles and inflicting many casualties on the enemy.”
 
Al-Mayadeen, a regional television station that leans toward sympathy for Hizbullah, originally said 15 Israelis were killed in the attack but that number likely seems exaggerated. The local English language paper The Daily Star said four soldiers were killed.

There were also rumors in Israel that a soldier had been kidnapped, although the Israeli army said that all Israeli soldiers were accounted for.