by Salim Yassine

BEIRUT (AFP) – Israeli fighter jets bombed Palestinian and Lebanese militant targets in Lebanon after guerrillas fired rockets into Israel in the fiercest cross-border violence seen this year. A fighter with the Lebanese Hezbollah militia and a member of a Syrian-backed radical Palestinian group were killed in the Israeli raids, while attacks from Lebanon left two Israeli soldiers wounded.

Each side blamed the other for the tit-for-tat attacks on the border, which remains highly volatile six years after Israel ended its 22-year occupation of southern Lebanon in May 2000. UN peacekeepers later said they had brokered a ceasefire, and calm appeared to have returned to the volatile area by early evening.

"Following intensive contacts with all parties throughout Sunday, UNIFIL has succeeded in obtaining a ceasefire which should take effect on the ground," Milos Strugel, spokesman for the UN Interim Force in Lebanon, told AFP.

Residents of the northern Israeli towns of Kiryat Shmona and Nahariya were ordered into shelters for several hours amid the fierce shelling but were later given the all-clear.

The radical Palestinian group Islamic Jihad said a statement it had fired the rockets to avenge the death of one of its leaders in a car bomb attack in Lebanon on Friday that it blamed on Israel.

But a Jihad spokesman in Lebanon later said the statement was "false".

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert vowed to deliver a "painful blow" to those behind the rocket attacks which hit deeper into Israeli territory than ever before, near the town of Safed.

One soldier was lightly wounded in the initial rocket attack near Safed, which lies between the border and the Sea of Galilee, while another was in a moderate condition after being wounded by a Hezbollah sniper.

Hezbollah said one of its fighters lost his life in an Israeli air raid while a militant from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC) was also killed and five wounded.

"If they continue, they will live to regret it," Olmert said of the rocket attacks, adding that Israel was prepared to use "all means at its disposal."

"Israel did not initiate attacks in Lebanon," he added. "There should be no mistake. We will not tolerate it and will reach out for those who initiated it."

But Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora denounced what he called the "enemy’s aggression" and called on the international community to force Israel to withdraw from the disputed Shebaa Farms area, blaming the worsening situation on the frontier on "continuing Israeli occupation".

Siniora said that if this happened, only Lebanese forces, not those of Hezbollah, would bear arms in the area.

A Hezbollah statement also charged that the Israeli bombardments "constitute a flagrant violation of Lebanese sovereignty."

Tensions remain high on the border despite Israel’s withdrawal, with violence often flaring between Hezbollah fighters and Israeli soldiers in the disputed Shebaa Farms region.

Shebaa was seized from Syria by Israel in the 1967 Arab Israeli war but is now claimed by Lebanon with Damascus’s consent.

Several clashes have also pitted Palestinian militant groups against the Lebanese army since the April 2005 withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon after a presence of almost 30 years.

Between six to eight rockets were fired from Lebanon during the day, the Israeli military said, and Hezbollah also claimed to have bombed the Israeli army’s border headquarters although no damage was reported.

Israel warplanes swung into action, launching eight raids against bases of the pro-Syrian PLFP-GC and Hezbollah holdouts in southern and eastern Lebanon near the border with Syria.

One raid targeted a base just 10 kilometres (six miles) south of Beirut, triggering panic among motorists on a busy nearby highway, police said.

PFLP-GC leader Ahmad Jibril, in an interview published in the Lebanese daily Al-Balad on Sunday, said his group was coordinating its anti-Israeli military action with Hezbollah.

Israeli foreign ministry spokesman Mark Regev said his country would make a formal complaint to the UN Security Council over the rocket firing.

"We believe that this attack shows the very real need for the expeditious implementation of Security Council resolutions 1559 and 1680 that call for the disarming of all the militia in Lebanon."

General Uri Adam, head of Israel’s northern command, said it was up to the Lebanese government to stop the violence.

"We have no intention of escalating the situation but demand that Lebanon take responsibility," he told reporters.

Before Sunday, the last rocket attack was in December, when seven Katyushas slammed into towns in northern Israel, without causing damage.