Two Israeli soldiers were lightly wounded Sunday when members of the Islamic fundamentalist Hezbollah movement fired missiles and mortars at an Israel Defense Force post in southern Lebanon.
IDF helicopter gunships and artillery responded, shelling villages north of the security zone Israel maintains just north of its border with Lebanon.
Sources in Lebanon said two Hezbollah gunmen were killed and a Lebanese civilian was wounded in Sunday’s exchanges.
The clashes came after Hezbollah forces launched a Katyusha rocket attack Friday on northern Israel. Four people were lightly wounded and property was damaged, when a rocket exploded between houses in Kiryat Shmona, which has been the target of previous rocket attacks.
Hezbollah claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it came in retaliation for the deaths of two civilians during heavy fighting the day before.
But Israeli military sources denied responsibility for the civilian’s deaths, saying there had been no shelling of the area where Hezbollah claimed the civilians died.
The sources maintained that Hezbollah was looking for excuses to fire rockets into Israel.
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