Israeli soldier killed by 'hostile aircraft' on Lebanon border, says army
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A man walks past a house and car damaged amid reported Israeli bombardment, in the southern Lebanese village of Kfar Kila.
PHOTO: AFP
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JERUSALEM - The Israeli army said on Dec 16 that a soldier was killed and two others wounded on the Lebanese border, with a spokesman confirming the casualties were caused by a “hostile aircraft”.
“Sergeant Major (reservist) Yehezkel Azaria, from Petah Tikva... fell during an operational activity in the Margaliot area, aged 53 at the time of his death,” the army said in a statement.
A military spokesman confirmed to AFP that two soldiers were also wounded in the attack, which was the result of an incursion by an unspecified “hostile aircraft”.
The army had reported the incursion earlier in the day, saying that air defences “intercepted a hostile aircraft that crossed from Lebanon into Israel”.
“An additional hostile aircraft that crossed from Lebanon was identified and fell in Margaliot... In response, IDF artillery is striking in Lebanon,” it added.
Azaria is the seventh Israeli soldier to be killed on Lebanese border since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip.
Since Oct 8, the day after the war started,
On Dec 15, residents said the Israeli army dropped leaflets on parts of southern Lebanon for the first time since hostilities flared, warning them not to help Hezbollah.
Since the cross-border exchanges began, more than 120 people have been killed on the Lebanese side, most of them Hezbollah fighters but also a Lebanese soldier and 17 civilians, three of them journalists, according to an AFP tally.
On the Israeli side, four civilians have been killed in addition to the seven soldiers, authorities have said. AFP
