Israel Seizes Lebanon Village
Israeli forces and allied militiamen who had earlier seized control of a south Lebanon village, opened fire with rubber bullets Friday on approaching journalists, wounding one.
The shooting in Arnoun, near the site of a guerrilla bombing that killed an Israeli soldier Monday, came as Lebanese Prime Minister Salim Hoss denounced Israel's occupation of the village.
Hoss appealed to the United Nations, the United States and France to intervene in what he called Israel's "terrorist operation."
Israeli warplanes, meanwhile, flew over Beirut Friday, breaking the sound barrier with two booms that rattled windows of apartment buildings in the capital.
Journalists began gathering just outside Arnoun, four miles northwest of the Israeli border Friday, hours after Israeli soldiers sealed off the town. Troops behind the freshly erected barbed-wire fence tried to disperse them with smoke grenades and warned through loudspeakers against moving closer.
When they still approached, forces opened fire on the 10 journalists.
Kassem Dergham, a Lebanese soundman working for Abu Dhabi television in the United Arab Emirates, was shot in the back and rushed by colleagues to a hospital in Nabatiyeh, four miles away. Doctors removed what appeared to be a rubber bullet that was embedded near Dergham's spinal cord, hospital officials said on customary condition of anonymity. Dergham, 56, was reported in stable condition.
The Israeli army said Friday its troops and allied militiamen of the South Lebanon Army had taken "preventive security measures" aimed at thwarting the storage of guerrilla arms and ammunition in Arnoun.
Iranian-backed Hezbollah guerrillas are fighting to oust the 1,500 Israeli soldiers and 2,500 allied militiamen from the border enclave Israel occupies as a buffer against cross-border guerrilla attacks.
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