Three people, including a French UN peacekeeper, were killed Sunday in a flare-up of violence between Israeli troops and Lebanon's Hezbollah militia in the volatile border area between the two countries. The peacekeeper's patrol was hit by shrapnel from an Israeli round near the disputed Shebaa Farms area, Lebanese police said, amid a series of retaliatory air raids triggered by a Hezbollah bomb attack that killed an Israeli soldier.
Sporadic but often deadly violence has continued across the border between the two countries, which remain technically at a state of war, despite Israel's pullout from south Lebanon almost five years ago.
A spokesman for the UN force in Lebanon said the French officer with the United Nations Truce Supervision Organisation (UNTSO) had been killed while a Swedish observer and their Lebanese driver were wounded.
The spokesman, Milos Srwjer, said the men had come under fire from the Israeli side of the Blue Line that the United Nations drew up to serve as the border between Lebanon and Israel after the Jewish state ended its 22-year occupation in 2000.
He added however that the Israeli fire had been provoked by "shots from the Lebanese side" of the Blue Line. The Israeli army confirmed that one of its troops had been killed in a Hezbollah bomb attack on Israel's north-eastern border with Lebanon.
"The officer, a lieutenant and second in command of an infantry unit with the elite Golani regiment, was killed when Hezbollah detonated an explosive charge as he headed to a military position in the area," a spokesman said.