Hizbollah guerrillas fired anti-aircraft guns at Israeli jets over south Lebanon today, drawing shells and machine gun fire along the frontier with Israel, the group and witnesses said.
"The air defence unit of the Islamic resistance . . . challenged Israeli warplanes that violated Lebanese airspace over the western end of south Lebanon," Hizbollah said in a statement. It later said it had resumed fire slightly further east.
Witnesses in the village of Teir Dibba near the coastal city of Tyre heard anti-aircraft fire as the aircraft swooped overhead and saw a shell hit the ground near a cluster of houses.
There were no immediate reports of injuries. It was not immediately clear whether the shell had been fired from the air or ground.
Witnesses in the Lebanese border town of Kfar Shouba said Israeli troops fired machine guns at the edges of the town and shelled a hilltop near the Shebaa Farms border zone, where Hizbollah fighters and Israeli troops have clashed since Israel's pullout from south Lebanon in May 2000.
An Israeli army spokesman denied that there had been a military response. "We have not retaliated for the anti-aircraft fire," he said.
Hizbollah regularly fires anti-aircraft guns at Israeli planes, which have flown over south Lebanon almost daily since Israeli ground troops withdrew after 22 years of occupation, partly under pressure from Hizbollah's Iranian and Syrian-backed fighters.
The flights often follow military activity in the Shebaa Farms, which lies near the Lebanese border and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.