Hezbollah Claims Attack against Israeli Troops

Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement on Tuesday claimed a bomb attack against Israeli troops on the ceasefire line between the two countries that wounded two soldiers.

Hezbollah fighters “detonated an explosive device on the Shebaa hills against a motorized Israeli patrol causing a number of injuries among the occupation’s soldiers,” the group said in a statement.

The group said the attack was carried out by the “martyr Hassan Ali Haidar unit,” which is named for a Hezbollah member killed on Sept. 5 when an Israeli listening device in Lebanon was detonated remotely as he tried to dismantle it.

Israel confirmed two soldiers were wounded in the blast, and an army spokeswoman said the attack took place “on the Israeli side of the border.”

The ceasefire line between the two countries is often tense, and on Sunday, Israeli troops shot and wounded a Lebanese soldier along the so-called Blue Line.

But Tuesday’s incident was the first time Hezbollah has carried out an attack against Israeli forces in the area since a March blast that Israel said caused no casualties.

Hezbollah claimed responsibility for that attack a month later, with its chief Hassan Nasrallah saying it was “part of the reply” to Israeli air strikes against the group’s positions in Lebanon.

Israel fought a bloody war against Hezbollah in 2006, which killed more than 1,200 people in Lebanon, mostly civilians, and some 160 Israelis, mostly soldiers.

The Blue Line between the countries was drawn up by the UN in 2000, after Israeli troops withdrew, ending a 22-year occupation of south Lebanon.

(Ma’an – www.maannews.net)

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