The situation in southern Lebanon continued to deteriorate after Hezbollah fighters carried out three attacks that included a suicide bombing aimed at Israeli troops operating in the region.
Tensions in northern Israel and the southern Lebanon security zone have increased since Israel broke off peace talks with Syria March 4, after Damascus refused to condemn a recent series of suicide bombings in Israel.
Fighting in southern Lebanon is often linked to the state of the Israel-Syrian peace negotiations.
An Israeli army officer was killed and an Israeli civilian lightly wounded Wednesday when the suicide bomber blew himself up near a convoy in the southern Lebanon security zone.
The dead soldier was identified as Capt. Salakh Kamal Zeidan, 23, from the Druse village of Beit Jann in northern Israel.
The suicide bomber belonged to the Islamic fundamentalist Hezbollah movement, which vowed days earlier that it would launch dramatic attacks against Israeli troops operating in southern Lebanon.
In a separate explosion Wednesday, a soldier with the Israel-allied South Lebanese Army was killed.
A Lebanese civilian was wounded in a third incident that day when an explosive device was detonated near a police station in the security zone town of Bint Jbail.
Israeli sources said the device, which apparently went off prematurely, had been intended for Israeli troops operating in the area.
Immediately after the suicide bombing, heavy artillery exchanges were reported between Israeli and Hezbollah forces.
Prime Minister Shimon Peres, visiting soldiers wounded in previous clashes in southern Lebanon, said at Haifa’s Rambam Hospital that if Hezbollah does not act with restraint, neither will Israel.
“We will not depend on promises or paper,” he told reporters, “but will see how things develop, and based on this, decide how to act.”
He dismissed a question about whether Israel had given the United States a pledge to act with restraint in southern Lebanon.
“There was no pressure,” he said. “The Americans conveyed a message. We said we will consider them, taking into account” the realities on the ground in Lebanon.
A day earlier, Peres denied rumors that Israel was planning a large-scale action against Hezbollah.
In response to those rumors Hezbollah threatened to launch Katyusha rocket attacks against communities in northern Israel if it was attacked.
The suicide bombing took when members of an Israeli convoy spotted a gunman approaching them.
When soldiers got of their jeep to approach him, the suicide bomber detonated the explosives.
The U.S. State Department issued a statement urging all parties to “restrain themselves in an effort to defuse the current situation.”
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