20000302

Bomb kills five SLA militiamen in Lebanon

KIRYAT SHMONA (Israel): A powerful bomb planted by guerrillas killed five pro-Israeli militiamen on Wednesday when it exploded near their jeep in a village in south Lebanon, Israeli security sources said.

In Beirut, the pro-Iranian Hizbollah group said in a statement that it had carried out the attack, at Hasbaya in the eastern sector of the occupation zone.

The dead were members of the South Lebanon Army (SLA) militia, which the Israeli army trains, arms and directs to fight alongside its soldiers in the border strip Israel carved out in south Lebanon in the mid-1980s.

The security sources said one Lebanese civilian was reported injured in heavy guerrilla firing directed at the area surrounding the site of the bombing.

There were no injuries to Israeli soldiers, the sources said.

Mounting casualties in south Lebanon in recent weeks have spurred public calls in Israel for an immediate troop pullout from the zone, which Prime Minister Ehud Barak -- holding out hope for an Israeli-Arab peace deal to back the step -- has declared will take place by July.

The attack appeared likely to complicate Barak's already mired efforts for an agreement with Syria, the main power in Lebanon with about 30,000 troops deployed there.

Israel contends Syria holds effective veto power over Hizbollah operations.

Israel has threatened fierce retaliation for attacks on its forces, although its past response to guerrilla strikes on the SLA has been equivocal.

Last month, retaliating for a wave of Hizbollah hit-and-run attacks that killed seven Israeli soldiers, Barak ordered air strikes that took out three power stations in Lebanon and injured 20 Lebanese.

Israel's U.S.-mediated peace talks with Damascus, which resumed last December after a 45-month break, broke down again in January over Barak's rejection of a Syrian demand Israel commit to ceding the whole of the Golan Heights, captured in the 1967 Middle East war.-Reuters