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Hizbullah shelling kills 16-year-old, wounds four in North
David Rudge and Jerusalem Post Internet Staff
Aug. 10, 2003
Haviv Dadon, a 16-year-old boy from the northern border town of Shlomi, died from wounds sustained in a cross-border shelling attack by Hizbullah.
It is the first fatality in over a year of such shelling by Hizbullah. (Click here
for a list of incidents on the border in the last three years.) The anti-aircraft shells landed on the town of Shlomi in the western Galilee. Four others were lightly wounded by shrapnel.
All were evacuated to the Nahariya Government Hospital by Magen David Adom "Natan" mobile intensive care ambulances.
Gabriel Na'aman, head of the Shlomi regional council, said that Haviv had worked for the council in a student clean-up town project. He said that as Haviv was finishing his workday of painting and picking up litter, a Hizbullah shell dropped 2 meters from Haviv, spraying him with shrapnel. He died shortly afterwards.
The mood in Shlomi and in other northern cities and towns is a mixture of sadness and anger. The residents had complained to both the Prime Minister and Defense Minister that Hizbullah's cross-border attacks would one day kill someone.
Na'aman said the he never received a response to his concern about the dangers facing his community from either the Prime Minister or Defense Minister.
Dore Gold, an adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon,
said the shelling constituted "unbridled escalatory attacks ... an intolerable state of affairs."
The Israeli Air Force destroyed the Hizbullah battery using a number of attack helicopters earlier today, a military source told The Jerusalem Post.
Lebanese officials said warplanes fired at least one air-to
surface missile on an area near the village of Teir Harfa, about 3 kilometers from the Lebanese-Israeli border.
Residents of the north were placed on high alert this morning as the IDF instructed civilians to enter air raid bunkers. This was the first time that the IDF has given such an order since Israel withdrew from it's security zone in south Lebanon three years ago.
Over the weekend, Israel's ambassador to the United Nations sent a letter to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan holding the Syrian and Lebanese governments responsible for Hizbullah's "acts of terror," Foreign Ministry spokesman Yonatan Peled said Saturday.
American diplomats also told Lebanon and Syria that the
administration was concerned about the "calculated and provocative escalation" by Hizbullah, State Department deputy spokesman Philip T. Reeker said. Hezbollah is on the US State Department's list of terrorist organizations.
Syria's state-run Tishrin newspaper charged in an editorial
Sunday that Israel was trying "to expand the circle of its aggression and deliberately provoke and threaten more than one Arab country," in hopes of slowing progress on the "road map" peace plan with the Palestinians long enough to deal with its internal problems.
But the official protest and warnings did not stop Hizbullah
from firing more anti-aircraft shells over the eastern part of Upper Galilee Saturday afternoon. Some shrapnel hit homes in Kiryat Shmona and Metulla and several people had to be treated for shock, but no one was seriously hurt and the damage to property was relatively light.
There were also no Israeli casualties as a result of
Hizbullah's cross-border bombardments on IDF positions in the Mount Dov and Mount Hermon regions and its subsequent firing over the Galilee on Friday.
Damage, however, was caused to IDF outposts in the Mount Dov region as well as to a house, which was unoccupied at the time, near the Golan Heights Druse village of Majdal Shams.
Hizbullah gunners unleashed a barrage of anti-tank, mortar, and Katyusha rocket fire at IDF positions on Mount Dov and on the Golan Heights in the Mount Hermon region Friday at about 10am.
On Sunday, only hours before the fatal shelling, Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom held Lebanon and Syria responsible for Hizbullah's actions.
"We say to Syria and Lebanon as responsible parties for Hizbullah behavior ... that if Hizbullah activities continue and constitute an undermining of security of the citizens of Israel, we will have no choice but to defend ourselves," Shalom said.
Shalom declined to elaborate on what he meant.
"We don't want to use the language of threats now and say what we will do and how we will do it," he said. "I think the regime in Syria knows very well what our capabilities are, and I don't think it's worthwhile for it to put us to the test."
Israel withdrew its forces from a self-declared security zone in southern Lebanon in May 2000, following more than a decade of low level warfare with Hizbullah, including frequent Hizbullah rocket attacks on northern towns. Since then large-scale violence between the sides has diminished, but dozens of smaller incidents have occurred that have led to the deaths of eight soldiers and five civilians.
David Rudge and Jerusalem Post Internet Staff
Aug. 10, 2003
Haviv Dadon, a 16-year-old boy from the northern border town of Shlomi, died from wounds sustained in a cross-border shelling attack by Hizbullah.
It is the first fatality in over a year of such shelling by Hizbullah. (Click here
for a list of incidents on the border in the last three years.) The anti-aircraft shells landed on the town of Shlomi in the western Galilee. Four others were lightly wounded by shrapnel.
All were evacuated to the Nahariya Government Hospital by Magen David Adom "Natan" mobile intensive care ambulances.
Gabriel Na'aman, head of the Shlomi regional council, said that Haviv had worked for the council in a student clean-up town project. He said that as Haviv was finishing his workday of painting and picking up litter, a Hizbullah shell dropped 2 meters from Haviv, spraying him with shrapnel. He died shortly afterwards.
The mood in Shlomi and in other northern cities and towns is a mixture of sadness and anger. The residents had complained to both the Prime Minister and Defense Minister that Hizbullah's cross-border attacks would one day kill someone.
Na'aman said the he never received a response to his concern about the dangers facing his community from either the Prime Minister or Defense Minister.
Dore Gold, an adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon,
said the shelling constituted "unbridled escalatory attacks ... an intolerable state of affairs."
The Israeli Air Force destroyed the Hizbullah battery using a number of attack helicopters earlier today, a military source told The Jerusalem Post.
Lebanese officials said warplanes fired at least one air-to
surface missile on an area near the village of Teir Harfa, about 3 kilometers from the Lebanese-Israeli border.
Residents of the north were placed on high alert this morning as the IDF instructed civilians to enter air raid bunkers. This was the first time that the IDF has given such an order since Israel withdrew from it's security zone in south Lebanon three years ago.
Over the weekend, Israel's ambassador to the United Nations sent a letter to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan holding the Syrian and Lebanese governments responsible for Hizbullah's "acts of terror," Foreign Ministry spokesman Yonatan Peled said Saturday.
American diplomats also told Lebanon and Syria that the
administration was concerned about the "calculated and provocative escalation" by Hizbullah, State Department deputy spokesman Philip T. Reeker said. Hezbollah is on the US State Department's list of terrorist organizations.
Syria's state-run Tishrin newspaper charged in an editorial
Sunday that Israel was trying "to expand the circle of its aggression and deliberately provoke and threaten more than one Arab country," in hopes of slowing progress on the "road map" peace plan with the Palestinians long enough to deal with its internal problems.
But the official protest and warnings did not stop Hizbullah
from firing more anti-aircraft shells over the eastern part of Upper Galilee Saturday afternoon. Some shrapnel hit homes in Kiryat Shmona and Metulla and several people had to be treated for shock, but no one was seriously hurt and the damage to property was relatively light.
There were also no Israeli casualties as a result of
Hizbullah's cross-border bombardments on IDF positions in the Mount Dov and Mount Hermon regions and its subsequent firing over the Galilee on Friday.
Damage, however, was caused to IDF outposts in the Mount Dov region as well as to a house, which was unoccupied at the time, near the Golan Heights Druse village of Majdal Shams.
Hizbullah gunners unleashed a barrage of anti-tank, mortar, and Katyusha rocket fire at IDF positions on Mount Dov and on the Golan Heights in the Mount Hermon region Friday at about 10am.
On Sunday, only hours before the fatal shelling, Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom held Lebanon and Syria responsible for Hizbullah's actions.
"We say to Syria and Lebanon as responsible parties for Hizbullah behavior ... that if Hizbullah activities continue and constitute an undermining of security of the citizens of Israel, we will have no choice but to defend ourselves," Shalom said.
Shalom declined to elaborate on what he meant.
"We don't want to use the language of threats now and say what we will do and how we will do it," he said. "I think the regime in Syria knows very well what our capabilities are, and I don't think it's worthwhile for it to put us to the test."
Israel withdrew its forces from a self-declared security zone in southern Lebanon in May 2000, following more than a decade of low level warfare with Hizbullah, including frequent Hizbullah rocket attacks on northern towns. Since then large-scale violence between the sides has diminished, but dozens of smaller incidents have occurred that have led to the deaths of eight soldiers and five civilians.
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