Fighting breaks out on Lebanon-Israel border

Hours after Israel killed the spiritual leader of Hamas, the largely dormant Lebanese-Israeli front erupted in fighting today.

Hezbollah guerrillas shelled Israeli positions in a disputed area and Israel retaliating with air strikes.

Lebanese officials said Hezbollah fired rockets and mortar shells at Israeli military outposts inside the disputed Chebaa Farms area near the borders of Lebanon, Syria and Israel.

Hezbollah linked the attack to Yassin’s assassination.

“Brigades of the great martyr commander Sheik Ahmed Yassin in the Islamic Resistance (Hezbollah) attacked all Zionist enemy positions in the Chebaa Farms, using direct weapons and rockets and scoring direct hits,” a statement said.

The Israeli army said Israeli fighter jets were responding and troops were also using artillery fire against suspected guerrilla hideouts near the Chebaa Farms.

The army said Hezbollah fired anti-tank missiles.

Lebanese officials said Israeli warplanes fired two missiles into valleys and mountainous areas near the villages of Kfar Chouba and Hilta, they said.

There was no immediate word on casualties.

The Chebaa Farms is uninhabited farmland on the foothills of Mount Hermon that Lebanon, backed by Syria, claims as its own.

Israel captured the territory when its forces seized Syria’s Golan Heights in the 1967 Middle East war.

The United Nations says the region is Syrian and that Syria and Israel should negotiate its fate.