Lebanon: Israeli strike hit Palestinian base
BEIRUT – Israeli drones bombed a Palestinian base in eastern Lebanon near the border with Syria early Monday amid rising tensions in the Middle East, the Lebanese state-run National News Agency and a Palestinian official said.
The strike came a day after an alleged Israeli drone crashed in a stronghold of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah in southern Beirut and another exploded and crashed nearby.
Lebanese President Michel Aoun told Jan Kubis, the U.N. special coordinator for Lebanon, that the attacks violate a U.N. Security Council resolution that ended the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah.
“What happened is equal to a declaration of war and gives us the right to defend our sovereignty, independence, and the safety of our land,” Aoun said in comments released by his office Monday. “We are people who seek peace and not war, and we don’t accept that anyone to threatens us though any means.”
The state news agency report said there were three strikes after midnight on Sunday, minutes apart, that struck a base for a Syrian-backed group known as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command, an ally of Hezbollah.
Abu Wael Issam, an official with the Palestinian group in Lebanon, told the Associated Press that the strike was carried out by Israeli drones and did not inflict any casualties.
He accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of using such attacks to boost his standing in Israel’s parliamentary elections, set for next month.
He said the Palestinian group’s “alternatives are open in confronting the Zionist enemy” but didn’t specify how or if it would retaliate. A statement issued later by the group said “Zionist aggression” will not stop the group and its allies.
There was no immediate comment from Israel on the strike, which the Lebanese news agency said hit near the village of Qusaya in the eastern Bekaa Valley. Airstrikes by Israel against Palestinian factions in Lebanon, such as this one, have been rare in the past years.