IDF Commander Killed On Lebanon Border, US Urges Maximum Restraint

Israel vowed to respond harshly to further Lebanese aggression after a reserve battalion commander was killed on Tuesday and another soldier was seriously wounded in the worst violence along the northern border since the 2006 Second Lebanon War.

Lt.-Col. (res.) Dov Harari, 45, from Netanya, was shot dead by a sniper from the Lebanese Armed Forces, and a company commander from his battalion, Capt. Ezra Lakia, sustained a gunshot wound to the chest. By Tuesday evening, Lakia was in stable condition at Rambam Medical Center in Haifa.

The violence began around noon, when a force from Harari’s reserve battalion entered an enclave along the border and near Kibbutz Misgav Am to conduct routine maintenance work. Enclaves refer to land that is sovereign Israeli territory but is on the other side of the border fence, which does not always run directly parallel to the internationally recognized border, known as the Blue Line.

The soldiers had coordinated their movement beyond the fence with UNIFIL and were working to cut down a tree when shots were fired in their direction. Lakia was shot in the chest by a Lebanese Army sniper, and Harari was shot in the head.

The IDF responded with heavy tank fire at an Lebanese position just over the border, killing three soldiers and a Lebanese journalist. Lebanese soldiers then fired rocket-propelled grenades at an Israeli tank south of the border.

IDF artillery began pounding the area, and a number of IAF attack helicopters were dispatched to bomb a Lebanese Armed Forces command center in the southern Lebanese town of Taiba. The center was heavily damaged, as were a number of LAF armored personnel carriers parked nearby.

The United States is urging that both Israel and Lebanon exhibit “maximum restraint” to avoid escalating hostilities between the two countries, after Tuesday’s deadly skirmish on the northern border.

US State Department Spokesman PJ Crowley described the Obama administration as “extremely concerned” about Tuesday’s violence along the Israel-Lebanon border zone. He said American officials are in touch with both sides, as well as with the UNIFIL mission there, to ascertain what happened.

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