Israeli warplanes responded to yesterday's Lebanese guerilla attack on a shopping centre by bombing an anti-aircraft battery on the edge of a south Lebanon village last night.
The air strikes were followed by warplanes overflying the Lebanese capital, Beirut, shaking buildings and setting off car alarms, eyewitnesses said.
Israel called the air raids a "warning signal" after the 16-year-old Israeli was killed and four others were wounded when rockets fired by Hizbollah Shi'ite Muslim guerrillas hit the northern border town of Shlomi.
It was the first fatality from Hizbollah shelling of northern Israel since the withdrawal of forces from southern Lebanon in May 2000 after a 22 years of occupation.
Tension has heightened along the border in recent days after Hizbollah, which is sponsored by Syria and Iran and controls southern Lebanon, fired salvos of rockets and mortar bombs at an Israeli military post in a disputed border area on Friday.
Israel lodged a complaint with the United Nations and officials in Jerusalem warned that Lebanon and its main power-broker Syria would be held responsible if they failed to rein in the Lebanese guerrilla group.
The United Nations responded to Sunday's violence by calling for all governments that have influence on Hizbollah "to deter it from any further actions which could increase the tension in the area." It also called on Israel to exercise restraint.
"We have no intention of escalation. This was a pinpoint, targeted response against the gun that fired those shells," Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's spokesman Mr Raanan Gissin told CNN television.