PATRICK-JOHN GARMOE Courier Staff Writer | Posted: Monday, April 16, 2001 12:00 am
Jets strike radar station in retaliation
for guerrilla attacks by Hezbollah.
DAHR AL-BAIDAR, Lebanon (AP) - Striking deep into Lebanon to retaliate for guerrilla attacks, Israel launched an air strike against a strategic Syrian radar station in the central mountains today - the first time Israel had targeted such a significant Syrian outpost in almost two decades. Three Syrian soldiers died and six were wounded, a Lebanese security officer said.
Syrian security forces sealed off the area in the barren mountains just north of a highway linking Beirut with Damascus, Syria's capital.
The air strike was in response to Hezbollah guerrilla attacks in recent months, an Israeli army spokesman said. The most recent was a cross-border attack on Saturday that killed an Israeli soldier near the Chebaa Farms area, where the borders of Lebanon, Syria and Israel meet.
Israel has repeatedly accused Lebanon and Syria, the main power broker in Beirut, of responsibility for attacks by the anti-Israel guerrillas and threatened to retaliate. But today's strike was a major new departure in the Israeli military response to the guerrilla attacks and increased the risk of escalation along Israel's tense northern border.
Raanan Gissin, an adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, suggested more air raids could follow if Syria failed to restrain Lebanese guerrillas, including the Shiite Muslim Hezbollah group.
"We sent a message to the Syrians that we see them as the only ones responsible, but at the same time … I am trying to prevent an escalation," said Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer.
In a statement, Lebanese President Emile Lahoud condemned the attack on Syrian positions as a "grave development expressing anew the bloody course adopted by Sharon since his coming to power in the Palestinian arena and outside."
U.S. Ambassador David Satterfield met Lahoud and Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, and later called on all parties to exercise restraint, saying Hezbollah's attacks "can only have the effect of creating an escalation."'
Syria's state news agency late today quoted an unidentified official condemning the Israeli air strikes as "a dangerous escalation" that would destabilize regional security. The official said only one soldier was killed and four others wounded in the Israeli air strike.
At least three impacts were heard shortly after midnight Sunday in the region of Dahr el-Baidar, a mountain pass on the highway, according to the witnesses and Lebanese police. Israeli jets roared on several runs as tracers from ground anti-aircraft installations were fired at the warplanes, the witnesses said.
Syria, which has 30,000 troops in Lebanon, has radar stations in the Dahr el-Baidar area and maintains bases and checkpoints for its forces along the crucial highway in mountains with an altitude of over 6,000 feet. The area is strategic because it overlooks much of Lebanon's Mediterranean coastline and the eastern Bekaa Valley, all the way to the mountain range that forms the border between Lebanon and Syria.
A Lebanese security officer at a checkpoint about a half mile from the radar station told reporters three Syrian soldiers were killed and six wounded. The officer, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the wounded were taken to a military hospital in Chtaura, six miles east. Reporters were barred from the hospital.
Later Monday, two Israeli warplanes flew over Lebanon's central mountains and Beirut around noon, breaking the sound barrier. Residents in Beirut's southern suburbs, a Hezbollah stronghold, scurried for cover, fearing the Israeli jets would unleash bombs.
It was the first time Israel had targeted such a significant Syrian outpost since the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, when the Israelis destroyed all the Syrian anti-aircraft missile batteries in Lebanon and pushed the Syrian army back from the Beirut to Damascus highway. Israeli helicopters attacked Syrian army positions around Beirut airport during the 1996 Israeli bombing campaign against Lebanese guerrillas, but Israeli military sources said the Syrians were not the target of the operation.
Before Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon last May, Hezbollah concentrated on attacking Israeli soldiers inside Lebanon, killing about 20 per year, and usually left the border villages alone. After Israel withdrew in May to the international border, the Israelis hoped the guerrilla attacks were over, but they have continued sporadically. Monday's strike was seen as a warning to Syria to rein them in.
Hezbollah has threatened to fire Katyusha rockets on northern Israel if Lebanese civilians or installations were targeted by Israel. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who took over from his late father less than a year ago, has talked tough on Israel, but the Syrian military is considered weaker and less equipped than Israel's advanced army.