Hizballah blows up “Mossad” patrol – first of more to come
Shortly after debkafile’s forecast of a Hizballah revenge strike for the Samir Quntar assassination, a Hizballah roadside bomb blew up against an IDF patrol at the Shebaa Farms on the Hermon slopes Monday afternoon, Jan. 4. No casualties were caused. debkafile’s intelligence sources report that this attack was just the first of a continuous offensive Hizballah is planning, that will spread from the Lebanise-Israeli ceasefire lines to the Golan.
The Israeli force answered Monday’s attack with tank artillery fire against the southern Lebanese town of Al-Wazzani and was answered by rocket fire from Lebanon.
Hizballah announced that it had blown up a bomb on the ceasefire line at the Shebaa Farms targeting a civilian car carrying a “senior Mossad officer.
The next Hizballah communiqué said: The Martyr al-Quntar Unit blew up a bomb against an Israeli patrol in the Shebaa Farms, destroying a military vehicle and causing casualties.
In a third communiqué, Hizballah said the car attacked carried a “senior Israeli army officer” – amending its previous claim of a Mossad officer.
The Israeli army temporarily closed all northern roads to civilian traffic in case the Hizballah attack spreads into a major clash.
debkafile reported earlier Monday that the rising tension between Tehran and Riyadh may serve Iran and its Lebanese proxy as an oportunity to attack Israel. The leader of that proxy, Hizballah’s Hassan Nasrallah, had repeatedly threatened to punish Israeli for the assassination of its high profile terrorist planner Samir Quntar in Damascus on Dec, 20. Quntar was freed by Israel as part of a prisoner swap in 2008, three decades after he was convicted of killing four Israelis. In September, the United States placed Quntar on its terror blacklist, saying he had "played an operational role, with the assistance of Iran and Syria, in building up Hizballah's terrorist infrastructure in the Golan Heights."