LEBANON: Cabinet meets as Israeli army reports that it has shot and wounded three Hizbollah fighters

The Lebanese cabinet met on Monday (August 21) as the Israeli army reported that it had shot and wounded three Hizbollah guerrillas in southern Lebanon. An Arab news network later reported that the Hizbollah fighters had been killed but gave no further details. U.S. President George W. Bush had earlier called for the urgent deployment of a United Nations peacekeeping force to southern Lebanon to shore up a week-old truce between Israel and Hizbollah guerrillas. Underlining the fragility of the truce, Israeli jets swooped low over the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli, witnesses reported. A raid on Saturday (August 19) by Israeli commandos on a Hizbollah bastion in eastern Lebanon drew condemnation from the United Nations which said that Israel had violated the Security Council resolution that halted the war. Israel said the helicopter-borne assault and air strikes were a defensive action to disrupt Hizbollah arms supplies. Israeli is maintaining its air and sea blockade on Lebanese which is having adverse effects on Lebanon's import driven economy. "It is very essential that all the world knows, especially the Arab countries that nobody can blockade Lebanon and the airport, the harbours all should open according to resolution 1701 which stipulates clearly that once there is cease of hostilities that they (Israel) will stop the blockade," Lebanese President Emile Lahoud, told reporters before he entered the cabinet meeting. The Israeli government came under further fire at home for its handling of the war, which failed to destroy Hizbollah or secure the release of two soldiers whose capture by Hizbollah in a cross-border raid on July 12 sparked the conflict.

ITN Source | August 22, 2006

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