Calm in Southern Lebanon as Army, UNIFIL Patrol Border Region
The Lebanese army and U.N. peacekeepers on Wednesday carried out patrols along the Blue Line for the third day in a row following a deadly weekend Israeli raid in Syria that left six Hizbullah members dead.
The state-run National News Agency said the southern border region witnessed calm as the military and UNIFIL patrolled the area all along the technical fence.
U.N. helicopters also overflew the border region, it said.
The movement on the Lebanese side of the border with Israel was met with a total absence of routine Israeli patrols along the frontier between Kfarkila and Adaisseh, the agency added.
But Israel has gone on high alert for possible attacks by Hizbullah.
Israeli officials said Tuesday that the "Iron Dome" anti-rocket defense system has been deployed near the Syrian and Lebanese borders as a precautionary measure.
Hizbullah has accused Israel of carrying out Sunday's airstrike, which occurred on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights in an area called Quneitra.
Among the dead in the airstrike was Jihad Mughniyeh, the son of Imad Mughniyeh — a top Hizbullah operative who was assassinated in a bombing in Damascus in 2008.
In addition to the six Hizbullah members, an Iranian general was killed in the attack.
But a senior Israeli security source claimed the general was not its intended target and that Israel believed it was attacking only “low-ranking terrorists.”
But Mohammad Ali Jaafari, commander of the Revolutionary Guard, said: “The Zionists must await ruinous thunderbolts after their crime in Quneitra,”
“The Revolutionary Guard will fight to the end of the Zionist regime ... We will not rest easy until this epitome of vice is totally deleted from the region’s geopolitics,” he added.
G.K.
M.T.
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