Senior IDF officer wounded on visit to southern Lebanon

JERUSALEM, Dec. 19 (JTA) — Sporadic fighting in southern Lebanon continued Thursday, with Israeli fighter jets rocketing Hezbollah targets north of the security zone. The air strikes took place after Hezbollah gunmen fired mortar bombs at a post of the South Lebanon Army, Israel’s ally in the region, during a visit there by a senior Israeli officer. Maj. Gen. Amiram Levine, head of the Israeli army’s northern command, was visiting the position near the village of Barachit when the attack took place. Levine was unharmed, but another officer with him, Brig. Gen. Eli Amitai, head of the Israel Defense Force’s liaison unit in southern Lebanon, was lightly wounded. This was the second time in a week that Amitai sustained light injuries in a Hezbollah attack. Over the weekend, he was wounded in a Hezbollah ambush of an IDF convoy in which he was traveling. After Thursday’s mortar attack, two Israeli planes fired rockets into two Hezbollah strongholds. Reports from Lebanon said two Lebanese civilians were wounded, but Israeli sources had no independent confirmation. Thursday’s fighting took place amid reports of two attacks this week on Syrian targets in Lebanon. In the first, a bomb exploded near Syrian military intelligence headquarters. In the other, shots were fired on a Syrian van traveling on the Lebanese highway, according to the Israeli daily Ha’aretz. There was no confirmation of who launched the attacks.