Lebanese anti-aircraft batteries fired on intruding Israeli aircraft Sunday for the first time since Israel's withdrawal from southern Lebanon more than a year ago.
They opened up three times as Israeli warplanes flew low over the coastal city of Sidon, 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Beirut, but failed to hit their targets, an AFP correspondent said.
In what has become an almost daily occurrence, formations of Israeli planes flew over the border area from east to west, the coast as far as Beirut and the southern part of the eastern Bekaa valley.
Correspondents said they broke the sound barrier and simulated attacks for more than an hour and a half.
Israeli violations of Lebanese airspace, the subject of numerous complaints by Beirut to the United Nations, have intensified since an attack by Lebanese Hizbollah guerrillas on Israeli troops in the disputed border Shabaa Farms area.
Israeli troops withdrew on May 24 last year from an area of southern Lebanon they had occupied for 22 years, but still hold the Shabaa Farms, captured from Syria in 1967 but now claimed by Lebanon -- SIDON, Lebanon (AFP)
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