Lebanon fury at `invasion' by Israelis

VISITING JOURNALISTS came under fire yesterday from the village of Arnoun in southern Lebanon after it was taken over by Israeli forces and their allied militia, the South Lebanon Army. A ricocheting bullet wounded one of the reporters.

The incident came as Lebanon's prime minister appealed to the UN, the US and France to intervene against Israel's expansion of its occupation zone in southern Lebanon.

It follows Israel's decision to take over the village, which was previously outside the zone in southern Lebanon long occupied by the Israeli army.

The remaining Lebanese residents left as Israeli troops surrounded Arnoun with a barbed wire fence and cut off electricity and water to houses.

Israel says a unit of its soldiers left Arnoun yesterday leaving a South Lebanon Army (SLA) detachment behind. This implies that it was the SLA who opened fire on the journalists.

Arnoun has been at the centre of a confrontation between Israel and the Lebanese government since Israel first tried in February to seal off the village, claiming it was used by Lebanese Islamic Hizbollah guerrillas against its nearby position at Castle Beaufort.

Most of its 2,000 inhabitants had already fled because of Israeli artillery fire. Two dozen houses were blown up by Israeli soldiers.

Lebanese students responded with mass demonstrations, during which they tore down barbed wire and danced in the village square singing patriotic Lebanese songs.

Israel claims that Hizbollah then returned to the village laying roadside bombs. Earlier this week Sergeant Major Noam Barnea was killed during a bomb disposal operation.

Israel says the Lebanese government ignored requests to take security control of Arnoun and it has no choice but to return.

A Lebanese minister said: "The Lebanese army is not going to be a defensive curtain for the Israeli enemy." On Wednesday an Israeli armoured patrol re-entered the village and searched it for guerrillas. In a statement yesterday the Israeli army said: "The inhabitants of the village of Arnoun will be permitted monitored entrance and exit through a pedestrian passage."

However, the reporters who tried to enter Arnoun and came under fire from smoke grenades and live rounds, said the last villagers were abandoning their homes.

Also at issue in the dispute over Arnoun is the future of the diplomatic understanding which ended "Grapes of Wrath", the Israeli bombardment of southern Lebanon in 1996.

Under this, Israel is not allowed to fire into inhabited areas or Hizbollah to fire out of them or into Israel.

Moshe Arens, the newly appointed Israeli Defence Minister, rejected Lebanese protests that Israel had "invaded" Arnoun. This internationally monitored agreement worked in favour of the guerrillas and should be abandoned, he said. If it is, then the war in southern Lebanon is likely to escalate and Hizbollah resume firing katyusha rockets into northern Israel.