Hizbullah MP Hussein Hajj Hassan on Monday warned to retaliate against the killing of a Lebanese man across the border with Israel. "This matter definitely will not pass in a way that the people will remain silent," Hajj Hassan said on LBC television. "It is the right of the resistance to respond one day by any means."
The lawmaker decried the lack of international criticism of the Israeli shooting. According to him, if the situation had been reversed, with an Israeli killed by fire from Lebanon, "you wouldn't imagine how many condemnations would have been issued ... as if a citizen on our side has no value."
The Lebanese man died and another was wounded when Israeli troops opened fire on them near the border, security officials said Sunday. A Lebanese security official told Agence France Presse: "We believe that the two men were involved in a drug smuggling operation."
A Lebanese military spokesman said that the two men were unarmed at the time of the incident and were on the Lebanese side of the border town of Ghajar.
U.N. peacekeeping troops, deployed in south Lebanon, said there was a "shooting incident in the area of Ghajar" and that it has started an "immediate investigation to ascertain the facts, looking into initial allegations of smuggling."
