Hezbollah Attacks in Lebanon Kill 2 Israeli-Allied Militiamen

BEIRUT —  Guerrillas killed two Israeli-allied militiamen in southern Lebanon on Tuesday and wounded a third, Lebanese security officials said. The attacks were the first such incidents since Israel’s decision Sunday to pull its troops from the area by July.

A militiaman from the South Lebanon Army was killed and another was wounded when guerrillas fired rockets at the Hardon military outpost, two miles north of the Israeli border, officials said.

Shortly afterward, an SLA militiaman was killed when a roadside bomb exploded while a patrol drove by near the village of Houla, east of Hardon and a little more than a mile west of the Israeli border.

The Iranian-backed Hezbollah group claimed responsibility for the attacks.

In a statement issued in Beirut, Hezbollah said its guerrillas had ambushed a patrol outside Hardon as the militant group attacked the outpost and two nearby positions.

The Shiite Muslim Hezbollah boasted about the Houla attack, saying its guerrillas had infiltrated so close to the Israeli border “despite the enemy’s security and military measures.”

Lebanese guerrillas have been waging a campaign of bombings and rocket attacks in an attempt to drive Israel’s approximately 1,000 soldiers and the 2,000-strong SLA militia from occupied southern Lebanon. Israel set up the present, 9-mile-deep “security zone” in 1985 with the aim of guarding against cross-border guerrilla strikes. Seven Israeli soldiers and a dozen SLA militiamen have been killed this year.

On Feb. 29, Hezbollah guerrillas killed five SLA militiamen in a bomb ambush in the occupied zone. A Jan. 30 Hezbollah bombing killed the No. 2 SLA commander.

The latest attacks kept up the pressure on the SLA, whose members face an uncertain fate after Israel’s announcement that it will end its occupation of southern Lebanon.

The Israeli Cabinet decision Sunday affirmed what Prime Minister Ehud Barak had been saying for months. But withdrawal from the zone without the agreement of Syria and Lebanon could leave the SLA and those who collaborated with Israel subject to revenge attacks by guerrillas or to prosecution by the Lebanese government.

The government and the guerrillas consider SLA members traitors who should be put on trial. Hezbollah on Monday warned countries where SLA members might be considering seeking refuge against allowing them in.

Last week, Israel’s deputy defense minister, Ephraim Sneh, said they would not be given asylum in Israel.