A day after a senior Israeli officer, three Lebanese soldiers and a Lebanese journalist were killed in a rare clash between the Israeli and Lebanese armies, Israel appeared keen to show it would not be deterred from operating in the area.
"We are continuing to operate. It will not be legitimate if they try to disrupt today, and we will have to respond," Ehud Barak, Israel's defence minister, said on Israel Radio.
The United States and the United Nations urged both sides to show restraint amid fears of wider conflict. The UN peacekeeping force in south Lebanon, UNIFIL, confirmed on Wednesday that Israel was cutting down trees only on the Israeli side, the force's spokesman Lt Naresh Bhatt said.
The deadly attacks were triggered by an attempt by Israeli soldiers to cut down a cypress tree blocking their view into Lebanon and a disagreement over which side of the border the trees grew.
A Lebanese army officer claimed that the tree was on the Lebanese side of the border, while the Israeli military said in a statement that the tree was in Israeli territory.
The clash was the first fatal cross-border incident since Israel's campaign against Hizbollah in 2006.
Lebanon's Hizbollah group, which battled Israel in the 2006 conflict, stayed out of the fighting on Tuesday.
Source > Telegraph
