Army, UNIFIL Patrol Border Area amid High Alert after Israeli Strike on Hizbullah
The Lebanese army and U.N. peacekeepers on Monday carried out patrols along the border with Israel amid a high alert in the area, mainly near the occupied Shebaa Farms, a day after Israel's deadly air strike on Hizbullah members in Syria.
The state-run National News Agency said Lebanese troops and UNIFIL patrolled the southern border while Israel stopped its patrols along the technical fence and intensified them one to two kilometers deep into Israeli territory.
There was high alert in the South in general after at least six Hizbullah members were killed on Sunday in an Israeli strike in an area known as Mazraat al-Amal on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights.
Israel seized part of the mountainous Golan Heights plateau from Syria during the 1967 Mideast war.
Despite the alert, UNIFIL spokesman Andrea Tenenti described the situation in the peacekeepers' area of operations as “normal.”
“Nothing has changed,” he said, adding “UNIFIL is carrying out its routine patrols with the Lebanese army.”
In a statement issued to the media on Sunday night, Hizbullah identified one of the six slain men as Jihad Mughniyeh, the son of Imad Mughniyeh, a top Hizbullah operative assassinated in a 2008 car bombing in Damascus.
The dead also included another senior Hizbullah commander, Mohammed Issa, and at least one Iranian national with the group, the statement said.
The Israeli air force has carried out several raids against targets in Syria, including depots allegedly storing weapons meant for Hizbullah, since the conflict there started nearly four years ago.
The most recent strike was in December, when Israeli warplanes struck weapons warehouses near Damascus, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group.
Sources close to Hizbullah told As Safir daily that the party's retaliation to Sunday's strike is "inevitable.”
But the officials said the retaliation would not lead to an all-out war.
“The party will take the time it sees necessary to set its next steps with calm and decisiveness,” they added.
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