Israel Defense Forces troops exchanged fire last night with two armed men trying to infiltrate Israel's northern border with Lebanon. Security sources in Beirut said a Lebanese citizen was killed in the incident and another was seriously wounded. According to reports, IDF forces opened fire on the armed men when they noticed them trying to cross the border into Israel in the northern village of Ghajar. An IDF spokesman said the Lebanese men were attempting to smuggle drugs into Israel. Security sources in Beirut said one Lebanese citizen was killed by IDF gunfire from across the border. Lebanon's state-run news agency said a person was wounded near the village of Wazzani in the southeastern corner of Lebanon from IDF gunfire across the border.
The casualties were taken to a hospital in the Lebanese town of Marjayoun, where officials there confirmed they had received one body and another person wounded. IDF troops suffered no casualties in the incident.
These were the first clashes of the kind since the Second Lebanon War, which broke out after Hezbollah militants crossed the border with Israel and abducted IDF reservists Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev. In the last 18 months, since the end of the war, there have been two incidents of Katyusha rockets launched at northern Israel. No casualties were reported in either incident.
Naim Qassem, Hezbollah's deputy secretary general, last week threatened to carry out additional kidnappings of IDF soldiers. Qassem also reiterated Hezbollah's stance that it would not give up on a single prisoner it had demanded from Israel.
Until 1967, Ghajar was a Syrian village on the Syrian-Lebanese border. It was captured by Israel during the Six-Day War. Half of the town is under Israeli control and the other half is in Lebanon. The last incident of the kind in Ghajar was in 2005, when Hezbollah militants attempted to abduct IDF soldiers stationed in the area. Paratroopers thwarted the kidnapping by opening fire and killing three Hezbollah militants.