Heavy fighting in southern Lebanon stopped abruptly on Monday after a United Nations-brokered truce came into effect, but reports that Israeli troops killed a Hezbollah guerrilla underlined the fragility of the truce.
Army Radio and the Haaretz newspaper’s website said the Hezbollah fighter was shot dead after he opened fire on Israeli troops in south-west Lebanon. It was the first reported clash since the ceasefire began.
A military spokesperson said the man was among an armed group that approached the army position, but declined to say whether the gunman had been killed. ”We will continue to defend our forces acting in the area,” the spokesperson said.
Thousands of Israeli troops remain in southern Lebanon, and they are not expected to withdraw fully until an international peacekeeping force arrives alongside Lebanese troops.
Security sources in south Lebanon said Israeli air strikes and artillery fire continued until just a few minutes before the truce took effect at 7am South African time. Then there was silence.
Israel said some soldiers began pulling out of Lebanon after the truce began. ”There are forces going out but there are enough forces that are staying,” a military spokesperson said.
There were no reports of any Hezbollah rockets being fired at Israel after the truce took hold.
”We are entering the stage of a ceasefire. The firing is over,” a senior Israeli army officer said over the radio, giving orders to his soldiers.
”We hope the ceasefire will be kept. We are asking you to stay alert and prepare as Hezbollah could still break it.”
Thousands of Lebanese displaced by the war headed south — some to check damage to their houses, others hoping to return home for good. Drivers honked their horns, and hundreds of cars jammed a narrow road leading south from Sidon.
”I’m so excited to see my home. I’d heard news it was completely destroyed, but even if there’s one room intact, I will stay there with my children,” said Sanaa Ayyad, carrying a baby while two young boys followed her.
But Israel said its ban on unauthorised traffic in southern Lebanon remained in place, and that any vehicles on the roads risked attack. An air and sea blockade of Lebanon would also continue, a military source said.
Aid groups said they needed swift access to southern Lebanon to help 100 000 people stranded in the area south of the Litani River, which has not been reached by aid convoys for a week.
”With the ceasefire in place, there can no longer be any no-go areas in Lebanon,” David Shearer, the UN humanitarian coordinator in Lebanon, said in a statement.
Air strikes
About 1 100 people in Lebanon, mostly civilians, and 156 Israelis, including 116 soldiers, have been killed in the war, triggered when Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid on July 12.
An Israeli air strike on a van on the outskirts of the eastern city of Baalbek killed seven people minutes before the truce began, Lebanese medical sources said. Air strikes near Lebanon’s border with Syria killed at least 10 people and one person was killed in a raid on a Palestinian refugee camp.
Under a UN Security Council resolution adopted on Friday, Israeli forces must start to withdraw as about 30 000 foreign peacekeepers and Lebanese soldiers deploy in the south. Hezbollah must also pull its fighters out of southern Lebanon.
Hezbollah has said it accepts the UN resolution, although it regards some aspects of it as unjust. The group has said it will cooperate with the peacekeeping force and Lebanese troops that deploy in the south, but has not said whether it will pull out its forces from the area south of the Litani River.
Israel says it would be entitled under the UN resolution to use force to prevent Hezbollah from rearming and to clear guerrilla positions even after the truce took effect.
Western diplomats and UN officials said they feared that Israel’s broad definition of ”defensive” actions could lead to a resurgence in large-scale fighting and prevent the swift deployment of the UN troops, likely to be led by France.
The truce has not resolved many key issues, including the fate of the two captured Israeli soldiers, the issue of whether Hezbollah will disarm and the status of the Shebaa Farms area that is claimed by Lebanon but occupied by Israel.
The question of how to deal with Hezbollah could once again fracture Lebanon along sectarian lines. A Lebanese Cabinet meeting scheduled for Sunday was postponed because of divisions over whether to discuss disarming Hezbollah.
The war in Lebanon coincided with an Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip to free another captured soldier.
An Israeli air strike on Monday killed three Palestinians in the Gaza Strip shortly after at least one rocket was fired into Israel from the area, doctors said. The Israeli army said it had targeted militants who had launched the rockets. — Reuters