LEBANON: Residents return to border town of Ayta Al Shab to find it in complete ruins; Hizbollah fighter says will fight Israel 'until victory.'

Residents of the border town of Ayat al Shab returned to find it in complete ruins on Monday (August 14), following five weeks of fierce fighting between Israeli troops and Hizbollah guerillas. Thousands of displaced families returned to their homes as heavy fighting in southern Lebanon stopped abruptly on Monday after a U.N.-brokered truce came into effect. The Israeli army said soldiers shot dead a Hizbollah fighter in southern Lebanon after he opened fire on them, the first casualty since the truce started. It said soldiers elsewhere shot another Hizbollah guerrilla who had approached them and aimed a gun at them. It was not known if he was killed. A Hizbollah fighter said that despite the truce, the group will continue to fight Israel 'until victory'. "Having a truce or no truce means nothing. We are (fighting) legitimately against Israel until victory," he said. "They (the Israelis) tried to enter Ayta Al Shab several times but they failed. We believed in God. They were destroying houses over our heads and we would still come out alive," he added. Under a U.N. Security Council resolution adopted on Friday, Israeli forces must start to withdraw as foreign peacekeepers and Lebanese soldiers deploy in the south. Hizbollah must also pull its fighters out of southern Lebanon. Hizbollah has said it accepts the U.N. resolution although it regards some aspects of it as unjust. "We are the women of Hizbollah, and we are Hizbollah and we will kill them. All these houses are ours, they are destroyed. We are Hizbollah," said a woman from the village. Around 1,100 people in Lebanon and 156 Israelis have been killed in the war that began after Hizbollah captured two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid on July 12. Israel says around 530 Hizbollah guerrillas were killed in the war. Hizbollah has acknowledged only about 80 dead. Thousands of Israeli troops remain in southern Lebanon, and they are not expected to withdraw fully until an expanded UNIFIL peacekeeping force arrives alongside Lebanese troops. The truce has not resolved many key issues including the fate of the two captured Israeli soldiers, the question of whether Hizbollah will disarm and the status of the Shebaa Farms area which is claimed by Lebanon but occupied by Israel.

ITN Source | August 14, 2006

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