Calling it “savage and indiscriminate bombing,” Lebanon on Monday sharply condemned the Israel Defense Force retaliatory attack against terrorists targets in southern Lebanon on Friday.
Although Lebanon declined at this point to ask for a Security Council meeting to discuss its complaint against Israel, diplomats here did not rule out a Security Council debate later this week.
“The Lebanese government rejects absolutely any Israeli justification for its assault against Lebanese towns and villages and innocent civilians,” Ambassador Rachid Fakhoury of Lebanon said in a letter to Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar.
The letter was circulated here Monday.
Israeli jets and helicopter gunships carried out wide-ranging reprisal raids on Hezbollah and Palestinian positions Friday, after a suicide car-bomb attack on an Israeli convoy in southern Lebanon two days before killed seven IDF soldiers. An eighth later died of injuries sustained in the blast.
Charging that the Israeli raid Friday was the 18th attack this year by the IDF against targets in Lebanon, the Lebanese envoy said:
“Lebanon calls upon the international community, the United Nations and the Security Council to take swift and decisive action to prevent Israel from repeating its acts of aggression.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
