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Lebanon Says Israeli Fighters Infringe Lebanese Air Space
Israeli warplanes infringed Lebanese air space and broke sound barriers over the capital of Beirut and central Lebanon on Tuesday, Lebanese security sources said.
Israeli planes also hovered over southern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley in eastern Lebanon, in which thousands of Syrian troops are deployed, the sources added.
Israel had promised to Steffan de Mistura, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan's personal representative for southern Lebanon, last Thursday that it would cease cross-border flight over Lebanon.
One day later, however, Israeli planes flew over south Lebanon after the Lebanese resistance guerrilla group Hezbollah attacked an Israeli position in the disputed Shebaa Farms.
As a follow-up retaliation, Israeli planes Sunday bombarded a Syrian radar station in the Bekaa Valley in eastern Lebanon, leaving two Syrian soldiers and one Lebanese injured.
Israeli troops withdrew from south Lebanon in May, 2000, ending a 22-year occupation there. But Lebanon and Syria say that the Shebaa Farms area, which is occupied by Israel, belongs to Lebanon. Hezbollah, or Party of God, vows to continue fighting against Israel as long as it occupies the land.
The Jewish country insists that it captured the farms in the 1967 Middle East war and the issue should be solved in its negotiation with Syria. It has warned that it would hold Syria responsible for any attacks launched by Hezbollah against its targets.
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