Heavy fighting on Israel-Lebanon border - report

Hezbollah and Israeli forces exchanged rocket and artillery fire across the border in southern Lebanon today, a Hezbollah official said.

He said Israeli forces were shelling several villages near the border and “we are retaliating”.

In Israel, medics said four people were wounded in cross-border and rocket fire from Lebanon.

Witnesses in southern Lebanon said the bombings were still continuing one hour after the clash began.

Al-Manar, the TV station of the Hezbollah guerrilla group, reported that Israeli artillery was pounding the fringes of the villages of Aita el-Shaab, Ramieh and Yaroun in the hills east of the coastal border port of Naqoura.

Israeli troops and Hezbollah guerrillas occasionally clash along the border in southern Lebanon.

It was not immediately clear what prompted the latest flare-up, which came as Israel’s continued its two-week-old offensive against Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip to try to win the release of a captured Israeli soldier.

But the clashes came after Israel’s air force dropped a quarter-ton bomb on a residential building in Gaza, killing at least six people, including two children.

The target of the air strike had been top Hamas militants meeting in the building, but Hamas said its top fugitive got away.