Two Lebanese hurt in rocket attack

Two Lebanese civilians were wounded on July 15 when the Iranian-backed Hizbullah fired Katyusha rockets at the Israeli-occupied border zone in South Lebanon, he added.

At least one Katyusha rocket also hit northern Israel, slamming into an open space near the Lebanon-Israeli border close to the Mediterranean Sea, but causing no injuries or damage, an Israeli army spokesman said.

Eleven rockets had been fired in two salvos within half an hour at Israeli army positions, including a patrol, near Hula in the Jewish state's self-declared "security zone" in South Lebanon he added.

Civilians Zeidan Ghader, 60, and his son Louai, 18, were wounded by shrapnel from rockets fired on an Israeli post in Dimashkiye, close to the international border between Lebanon and Israel, hospital sources said.

Hizbullah claimed responsibility for the attacks, saying in a statement that the rockets had "achieved their goals and caused losses in enemy ranks."

It said the attacks were in retaliation for Israel's "repeated violations" of a 1996 cease-fire accord between the two sides to spare civilians.

A Palestinian and her son, both farm workers, were killed on July 14 in South Lebanon, bringing to three the number of civilians killed in Israeli attacks in the area in three days, Lebanese police said.

Under the April 1996 cease-fire agreement civilians are to be spared from fighting, and attacks must not be launched from civilian residential areas.

The accord put an end to Israel's 17-day "Grapes of Wrath" offensive against Hizbullah guerrillas last year that left 175 people, mostly civilians, dead.

Hizbullah spearheads the guerrilla war to force Israel from its South Lebanon buffer zone, which Israel says it needs protect its northern territory from attack.

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