From: UPI
Newsgroups: soc.culture.lebanon
Subject: Guerrillas rocket Israeli positions
Date: 9 Nov 92 15:30:49 GMT
Reply-To: ayman@eecs.umich.edu
Organization: United Press International
X-Note: This article was automatically cross-posted to soc.culture.lebanon

[ Article cross-posted without permission ]
	TYRE, Lebanon (UPI) -- Guerrillas fired two more Soviet-made Katyusha
rockets Monday on positions of the Israeli-backed South Lebanon Army
militia inside the southern border zone hours after similar rockets
landed inside Israel, a United Nations officer said.
	The officer of the U.N. Interim Force in southern Lebanon (UNIFIL)
told United Press International that one rocket hit an SLA position on
the Qantara hill in the central sector of Israel's self-declared 
``security zone.''
	He said no immediate information on casualties in SLA ranks was
available.
	The UNIFIL officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, added that
the second rocket landed few yards away from a UNIFIL post manned by the
Finnish battalion, prompting peacekeepers to seek refuge in shelters. He
said the shelling caused only material damage.
	The SLA-run ``Voice of the South'' radio station confirmed the attack
and said the two rockets hit the SLA post, inflicting no casualties.
	Security sources said Israel early Monday rushed seven artillery
batteries of 175mm to the Majidiyeh area near the Christian town of
Marjeyoun inside the border zone.
	The sources expected the Israelis to widen their shelling of Shiite
villages in such a way as to target new Hezbollah positions.
	In the ancient city of Baalbeck, 52 miles east of Beirut, Israeli
warplanes flew at low altitude over Hezbollah positions and the
fundamentalist fighters confronted them with anti-aircraft machineguns.
	The Katyusha attacks came after resistance guerrillas fired during
the night 15 similar rockets against the Upper Galilee area in northern
Israel.
	Security sources in the southern port city of Tyre said 10 rockets
landed inside Israeli territories and five others on the security zone
in southern Lebanon.
	The sources said Israel retaliated to the nightime Katyusha attacks
by shelling Shiite villages adjacent to the border enclave.
	Some 50 shells rained down on fields and valleys near the villages of
Henniya, Ezziya and Beyout Al Seyyad farm, located within the operation
field of the Nepalese and Fijian battalions. No casualties were yet
reported.
	Violence mounted in southern Lebanon after Israeli Air Force jets
raided Hezbollah positions in Ain El Tineh in southwestern Bekaa Valley
on Sunday, killing four Hezbollahis and wounding six others, thus
triggering the Katyusha retaliatory attacks.
	Military sources in Tyre told UPI Monday that Palestinian groups
opposing the ongoing Mideast talks were believed behind the Katyusha
attacks. Last month, Hezbollah officials denied any involvement and
accused ``a third party'' of being behind such attacks.
	But Hezbollah officials on Monday affirmed that the pro-Iranian
guerrillas will maintain the Jihad (Holy Struggle) against Israel until
the liberation of southern Lebanon.
	``We will not calm down until the elimination of the (Israeli)
occupation,'' Sheikh Mohammed Yazbek, a member of the Shoura Council,
told a crowd of 1,500 people during the burial ceremony in Baalbeck of
the four Hezbollah fighters who were killed in Sunday's Israeli air
strike.
	Yazbeck rejected the Arab-Israeli peace talks and said: ``This is an
open war and we will continue the resistance.''
	Meanwhile, the representative of the Palestinian Hamas Movement in
Lebanon, Abu Mohammed Mustafa, called for escalating the military
struggle against Israel and halting peace negotiations.
	``It is not the right of any Palestinian official or leader to sell
Palestine for the Jews in return of nothing,'' Mustafa told a crowd of
hundreds of Palestinians during a rally in the refugee camp of Burj Al
Shimali near Tyre.
	The Israeli army responded to the rocket attacks an artillery barrage
against positions of the pro-Iranian Hezbollah militia, north of the 9-
mile-wide ``security zone'' Israel has carved out in southern Lebanon.
	Ori Orr, chairman of Parliament's powerful Foreign Affairs and
Defense Committee, said the attacks would not deter Israel from pursuing
Washington peace negotiations, set to resume Monday with Lebanon, Syria,
Jordan and the Palestinians.
	Israel established the ``security zone'' in 1985 with the stated
intention of ending rocket attacks and infiltrations against its
northern towns.
	Israel's ambassador to Washington, Zalman Shoval, contacted U.S.
Assistant Secretary of State Edward Djerejian after the Katyusha
firings, expressing Israel's ``concern over the deterioration in the
north'' and asking that thre United States press Syria and Lebanon to
curb Hezbollah violence, state-run Israel Radio reported.
	Last month, an eruption of Israeli-Hezbollah violence cast a shadow
over the Washington talks, as Israel massed tanks along the Lebanese
border after a 14-year old boy was killed by a Katyusha rocket in Kiryat
Shemona.