Israeli forces carried out a raid deep in southern Lebanon Saturday morning, disrupting Syrian arms shipments to Hizbullah terrorists. One IDF officer, Lt-Col. Emanuel Moreno, died in the operation. Lebanese officials confirmed that three Hizbullah members were killed in the confrontation.



Unofficial sources report that two Hizbullah terrorists were captured by IDF troops during the operation, which took place near Baalbek in eastern Lebanon. About 97 kilometers (60 miles) north of the Israel-Lebanon border, Baalbek was the scene of previous IDF strikes against Syrian arms shipments to the Hizbullah.



Two IDF soldiers were also reportedly injured during the mission. They were flown to a hospital in Israel.



The air force flew drones and warplanes across eastern Lebanon early Saturday in order to cover up the commando attack in Baalbek. A special forces unit unloaded army vehicles from a helicopter and headed toward the city, but Hizbullah terrorist guerillas intercepted them. The operation in Lebanon was apparently exposed, military sources said, when IDF planes had been identified; however, the mission went ahead as planned.



In the wake of the Israeli operation, United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan called Prime Minister Ehud Olmert Saturday evening to update him on the deployment of UNIFIL forces in Lebanon and to express his organization's dismay at the Israeli raid. Reiterating official positions made public earlier in the day, PM Olmert told Annan that Israel honors the United Nations Security Council ceasefire resolution, but reserves the right to take defensive action to prevent the re-arming of the Hizbullah.



The UNSC resolution establishing the ceasefire prohibits foreign weapons from reaching Lebanon without authorization of the Lebanese government. Israel considered the continuing arms shipments to Hizbullah to be a violation of the ceasefire. As Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said on Saturday, "Israel is entitled to act to defend the principle of the arms embargo."



United Nations Middle East envoy Terje Larsen disagreed, saying on Saturday that such an Israeli raid violates the UN Security Council ceasefire resolution.



Lebanon threatened to stop deploying its soldiers in southern Lebanon following the Israeli strike, which Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora called "a flagrant violation" of the UN ceasefire terms.



The Lebanese government orders regarding the arms held by the Hizbullah, drafted by Lebanese parliamentary Speaker Nabih Berri and Siniora,are that Hizbullah may continue to openly maintain its arsenal north of the Litani River, but south of the Litani, weapons would be permitted to Hizbullah forces only so long as they remained concealed.



The Litani River bisects Lebanon and runs from between 4 and 40 kilometers (2.5 - 25 miles) from the Israeli border with Lebanon.



Last Monday, Lebanese Defense Minister Elias Murr stated, "The army is not going to be deployed in southern Lebanon in order to disarm Hizbullah, something that Israel was unable to do in its war." The army is to be deployed, he said, "in order to protect the civilians and to maintain the achievements of the resistance [the Hizbullah]."



According to a weekend report from Beirut in the Australian newspaper The Age, an internal document distributed among Lebanese army forces over the past week calls for troops to stand "alongside your resistance and your people who astonished the world with its steadfastness and destroyed the prestige of the so-called invincible army after it was defeated."