BEIRUT: Soldiers and volunteers on Thursday were battling a blaze on Lebanon’s southern border caused by Zionist bombing overnight, local officials said, as the occupation and Hezbollah exchange near-daily cross-border fire.
"Overnight (Zionist) bombing with phosphorus led to the fire, which has affected a broad forested area and spread due to the high winds,” Naqura mayor Abbas Awada told AFP in a statement. In recent weeks, Lebanon’s official National News Agency and Lebanese paramedics have reported fires and injuries due to white phosphorus, while Human Rights Watch has accused the Zionist occupation of using the incendiary weapon in its war against Hamas in Gaza, and in southern Lebanon. Zionist authorities have denied the allegations.
Mayor of the border village of Alma al-Shaab, Jean Ghafari, said fire broke out after Zionist bombing late Wednesday. "The blaze reached the edges of the village after midnight” and was still burning as of Thursday afternoon, he told AFP, adding that it "has come close to houses”. Security forces, civil defense personnel, United Nations peacekeepers and volunteers were battling the blaze but "have been unable to completely control it because of strong winds”, Ghafari added.
The municipality said some 70 percent of the village’s population had fled due to Zionist attacks. An AFP photographer saw fire near houses on the outskirts of Alma al-Shaab and burnt olive trees, with the blaze mainly concentrated between the village and the coastal city of Naqura.
Parliament speaker Nabih Berri on Thursday condemned the Zionist use of "phosphorus bombs” along Lebanon’s border and blamed "the international community” for the blazes, alluding to Western military support for the Zionists.
Exchanges of fire across the Lebanon-Palestine border have since killed at least 57 people in Lebanon, according to an AFP tally, mostly Hezbollah combatants but also four civilians, including Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah. Four Zionists have been killed on the other side, including one civilian. Phosphorus, a substance that catches fire on contact with the air, is used to create smokescreens to hide troop movements, illuminate the battlefield or destroy buildings by fire. — AFP