Names of Palestinian Militants Involved in Katyusha Attack on Israel Revealed
Press reports on Sunday disclosed the names of Palestinian militants involved in the Katyusha attack on northern Israel, but Lebanese security sources denied Hamas was behind the rocket fire.
The daily al-Balad identified the Palestinian suspects arrested for allegedly firing rockets from southern Lebanon into Israel on Thursday as Imad J.A., Jamil A.A., Mahmoud A.S., Jamal A.D. and Ayman A.J.
It said among the arrested was also Iyad B, a Palestinian-Jordanian.
An Nahar newspaper on Sunday also quoted Cabinet sources as saying the government had obtained a report from the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon saying that the rocket attackers "enjoy a high level of professionalism."
Meanwhile, a Lebanese security source denied Israeli press reports that claimed the Lebanese army had arrested seven Hamas members "for involvement in the Katyusha attack."
The Lebanese army and U.N. peacekeepers on Friday discovered a weapons cache near the villages of Kfar Shuba and Kfar Hammam close to the border with Israel.
Al Balad said UNIFIL was aware of the location of the rockets near Kfar Hammam but that it did not dare disclose information about it, citing difficulty to reach them as well as the danger of passing through the cluster bomb-planted road.
A rocket launcher and several rockets were found Friday in an area near the deployment of UNIFIL in southern Lebanon, the army said in a communiqué.
UNIFIL issued a similar statement saying that a UNIFIL patrol "operating in coordination with the Lebanese Armed Forces found an old weapons cache inside two disused bunkers."
The weapons find came a day after several rockets fired from Lebanon slammed into an area around the northern Israeli town of Nahariya, lightly wounding two people, amid heightened fears of a second front opening up in the Gaza war.
Hizbullah has denied it fired the salvo while officials in both Israel and Lebanon said it was probably the work of a radical Palestinian faction.
Israel launched a deadly onslaught on the Gaza Strip on December 27 to stop rocket attacks from the enclave territory.