Israeli fighter jets buzzed President Assad's summer residence in the northern Syrian city of Latakia in what was intended as a message that Hizbullah's attacks on Israel's northern frontier from south Lebanon must be stopped, state-run Israeli television reported late Saturday.
"President Assad was inside that residence in Syria's northern port city of Latakia when the Israeli warplanes flew above it at almost rooftop level last Sunday," the TV report said.
The incursion, it said, came after the death of an Israeli boy by shrapnel of Hizbullah anti-aircraft in the northern Israeli settlement of Shlomi.
The report indicated that Israel's F-16 fighter-bomber staged the foray into Syrian airspace via Lebanon, minutes after breaking the sound barrier over Beirut.
Syrian officials, however, denied Sunday that Israeli warplanes had flown over the palace of Assad. They said that Israel was trying to raise tensions in the region by publicizing that jets had flown over the palace.
Meanwhile, according to Haaretz, a Hizbullah activist named Ahmad Ma'aniya, acting in collaboration with Iranian Revolutionary Guards, has been planning to kidnap an Israeli or a Jewish person abroad.
According to the Sunday's edition of the Tel Aviv-based newspaper, "Israeli security officials warn Israelis and Jews abroad not to be enticed by seemingly tempting business offers of the sort that led to the abduction of an Israeli, Elhanan Tanenbaum, in late 2000 and his confinement in Lebanon."
In a speech delivered late last month, Hizbullah chief Sheikh Hasan Nasrallah warned that he was giving Israel a "last chance" to pursue prisoner swap negotiations. Should this opportunity not be seized, threatened the Lebanese group leader, Hizbullah will take certain steps to move the negotiations forward. (Albawaba.com)
© 2003 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
