LEBANON - Dec 26 - Lebanese Army Dismantles Eight Rockets Aimed At Israel

APS Diplomat Recorder, Dec 31, 2009

Lebanese Army soldiers find and dismantle eight Katyusha rockets that were pointed south toward Israel. The rockets were found near the southern town of Naqura, in the border region where an expanded UN peacekeeping force has been monitoring an uneasy truce since the war in the summer of 2006 between Israel and Hizbullah, the Shi'ite militant group.

The UN force is based in Naqura, and UN teams were sent to help the army dismantle the rockets and investigate the episode, said Yasmina Bouziane, a spokeswoman for the UN Interim Force in Lebanon. The Lebanese Army released a statement saying that the eight rockets were of different weights and calibers, but it did not say how they were found. Hizbullah is the dominant force in southern Lebanon, but there are also Palestinian camps, where other militant groups bent on fighting Israel have a presence. In June 2007, three rockets were fired into Israel from southern Lebanon, but they did no damage and the attack did not provoke any wider hostilities. The peacekeepers periodically find and destroy weapons caches. However, Israeli officials have repeatedly complained that the presence of the peacekeepers and the deployment of the Lebanese Army to southern Lebanon in August 2006 have failed to prevent Hizbullah from rearming. Hizbullah's leader, Shaikh Hassan Nasrallah, has said that the group has rearmed and is better prepared than ever to fight Israel. For its part, the Lebanese government has accused Israel of violating UN Resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 war, by trespassing into Lebanese territory during brief raids and by violating Lebanon's airspace with jet flyovers.