Lebanon arrests two spying for Israel

BEIRUT - Two people accused of spying for Israel have been arrested in Lebanon, the army said in a statement on Saturday.

"The Army Directorate of Intelligence, after a series of investigations in the Bekaa region, detained two people belonging to a network of espionage and terrorism linked to the Israeli enemy," the statement said.

"They admitted gathering information on political party offices and monitoring the movements of party figures for this enemy," it said, adding that they were detained on Friday.

"Communications devices and sophisticated cameras" were found in the possession of the accused, the statement said. An army official declined further comment because of the continuing investigation.

The Bekaa Valley in eastern Lebanon where the army investigation took place is considered to be a stronghold of the Hezbollah movement.

Israel has been previously linked by security sources to assassinations of public figures.

In June 2006, the Lebanese army uncovered what it said was an Israel-linked network it accused of being behind the killing the previous month of senior Islamic Jihad leader Mahmoud Majzoub and his brother Nidal in a car bombing in the southern port city of Sidon.

Meanwhile, twelve Israeli military aircraft flew over southern and northern Lebanon on Friday in violation of a United Nations resolution, the army said.

Six Israeli jets flew over the southern village of Alma el-Shaab for about 30 minutes in the morning while six other planes overflew the northern region of Batroun also for 30 minutes, a statement said.

"The Israeli enemy violated Lebanese airspace and Resolution 1701," which the United Nations Security Council passed in August 2006, the statement said.

The United Nations has called on Israel repeatedly to stop violating Lebanese air space.

The army also reported that three Israeli aircraft, including a drone, flew over Lebanon on Thursday.

Israeli cabinet ministers have warned that Lebanon's civilian infrastructure could be targeted in any new war, now that the Hezbollah-led opposition has secured veto powers in a national unity government.

Israel waged a bloody 34-day war on Lebanon in the summer of 2006 after Hezbollah fighters seized two Israeli soldiers in a deadly cross-border raid that aimed to free Lebanese soldiers from Israeli prisons. The bodies of the soldiers were returned in a prisoner swap earlier this year.

The war claimed the lives of more than 1,200 people in Lebanon, most of them civilians, and more than 160 Israelis, most of them soldiers.

Hezbollah, originally a resistance group formed to counter an Israeli occupation of south Lebanon in 1982, had forced the Israeli military out of Lebanon in 2000. Israel, however, continues to occupy the Lebanese Shabaa Farms.

Syria accuses US troops of killing eight civilians

DAMASCUS: American helicopter-borne troops assaulted a building in a Syrian village near the border with Iraq on Sunday, killing eight civilians, official Syrian media reported.

"Four US helicopters violated Syrian airspace around 16:45 local time (1345 GMT) on Sunday," state television and the official Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) said. "US soldiers" who emerged from the helicopters "attacked a civilian building under construction and fired at workmen inside, causing eight deaths," the report said. "The helicopters then left Syrian territory" toward Iraq, which US forces have occupied since 2003

Earlier, private Al-Dunia television said nine civilians died in the attack. Al-Dunia said an unknown number of US helicopters attacked the village of Al-Sukkiraya, 5 kilometers inside Syria and about 550 kilometers northeast of the capital.

"We are in the process of investigating," Sergeant Brooke Murphy, a US military spokesperson, said in Baghdad.

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said last month that Iran and Syria - long targets of US blame over  unrest in Iraq - now posed "no problem."  Other Iraqi officials have also said that Syria has been increasing border security.

Lebanon's Kantar to continue fight against Israel

BEIRUT - Three months after his release from an Israeli jail in a prisoner swap, Lebanese fighter Samir Kantar says he is more than ever committed to resisting Israeli occupation.

"The resistance must continue ... and I am totally committed to the resistance," Kantar, 46, said in an interview. "I am ready to take part in any resistance mission."

Kantar is considered a hero by many in Lebanon, where he was given a red carpet welcome on his release in July.

He said he now spends his days mostly in meetings linked to the resistance and was convinced that Israel was preparing a major attack against Lebanon.

"They don't realize what we have in store for them," he said, sitting in a seaside apartment on the outskirts of Beirut.

"Israel is going to suffer great losses and they will lose for sure," he added. "The idea that Israel is an invincible, secure state has become a myth."

He said that even if Israel withdrew from the Lebanese Shebaa Farms territory captured by Israel in 1967, the resistance would continue.

"The resistance will end only when the Zionist entity disappears," he vowed, reflecting his belief in the one state solution, where Palestinian Arabs and Jews are expected to govern themselves in a united democratic non-Jewish state.

Recalling the cross-border raid that landed him in an Israeli jail in 1979, when he was just 16 years old and part of the Palestine Liberation Front, Kantar says he has no regrets and denies killing Haran and his daughter.

"I remember every detail of that night," he said calmly, pulling on a cigarette. "The father kept insisting on taking his daughter with him and that delayed the operation for about 10 minutes.

"We were not interested in the girl," he added.

He said both were killed by Israeli fire during a fierce battle that took place as and his fellow fighters tried to flee with the two Israeli hostages.

But the official Israeli story claims otherwise, setting out to spread a brutal image of Kantar.

"I just wish they would give as much importance to the children killed during the 2006 (Hezbollah) war with Israel and the Palestinian children dying every day," Kantar said.

Israeli security officials have vowed to assassinate Kantar but he said he was not especially concerned for his safety and realized he could never lead a "normal life" though he hoped to one day marry and have children.

"I don't live with the obsession that I may get killed," he said.

As to his most searing memory of the time he spent in Israeli jails, Kantar said it concerned a prison guard who spoke to him in Arabic.

"He told me 'listen Samir, you are a young man now but by the time you get out you will have become a burden on society," Kantar said.

"I guess my message to the Israelis today is that they didn't manage to break me."

Israel waged a bloody 34-day war on Lebanon in the summer of 2006 after Hezbollah fighters seized two Israeli soldiers in a deadly cross-border raid that aimed to free Lebanese soldiers from Israeli prisons. The bodies of the soldiers were returned in a prisoner swap earlier this year.

The war claimed the lives of more than 1,200 people in Lebanon, most of them civilians, and more than 160 Israelis, most of them soldiers.

Hezbollah, originally a resistance group formed to counter an Israeli occupation of south Lebanon, had forced the Israeli military out of Lebanon in 2000. Israel, however, continues to occupy the Lebanese Shabaa Farms.