Three armed terrorists were killed in a clash with an Israel Defense Force unit patrolling the southern Lebanon security zone, northeast of Ishiyeh village, early Saturday morning. There were no Israeli casualties.
Two soldiers of the Israel-backed South Lebanon Army (SLA) were wounded in an encounter in the same area Friday night.
IDF sources did not immediately identify the slain terrorists, save to say they were Palestinians, not members of the pro-Iranian Hezbollah, which is composed mainly of Lebanese Shiites. Hezbollah has been active in and around the security zone recently and took credit for a Katyusha rocket attack on Upper Galilee.
On Sunday, a dissident faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization headed by Naif Hawatmeh said in Beirut that the three dead men were part of a group it sent to the security zone for an operation against the IDF or the PLO.
Hawatmeh, a Marxist-oriented, pro-Soviet terrorist leader who is also close to Syria, heads the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine. It was represented on the PLO executive committee until Hawatmeh broke with PLO chief Yasir Arafat and began stalking PLO personnel as well as Israelis.
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