Israel-Lebanon Border Strife For Third Day
ISRAELI soldiers killed three guerrillas who entered northern Israel from Lebanon yesterday. The Israeli Army command alleged the guerrillas planned to attack an Israeli town.
An Israeli helicopter fired a missile into a village in south Lebanon soon after the guerrillas were killed in northern Israel. One person was killed, and a three-story building was damaged.
A Palestinian guerrilla group based in Syria, the Fatah-Uprising, claimed responsibility for the aborted raid.
It was the third straight day of hostilities in the region, the last active Arab-Israeli war front. Radical Palestinian factions backed by Syria have vowed to derrail the Sept. 13 Israel-Palestine Liberation Organization peace accord by stepping up attacks from south Lebanon.
Iranian-backed guerrillas of the Hizbullah staged eight grenade-hurling forays into Israel's self-styled ``security zone'' in south Lebanon Tuesday night.
The assaults, mounted behind barrages of Katyusha rockets, were in retaliation for the death of three Hizbullah guerrillas in Israeli air raids on the group's frontline supply bases Tuesday.
The renewed attacks come as Syrian President Hafez al-Assad prepares to travel to Geneva next month for a meeting with President Clinton.
The United States hopes the talks will break the deadlock in the Syrian and Lebanese tracks of the Arab-Israeli peace talks. Israel, Vatican sign accord
Israel and the Vatican signed a recognition agreement in Jerusalem yesterday, taking a step toward ending some 2,000 years of enmity between Christians and Jews. Israel's deputy foreign minister, Yossi Beilin, and Msgr. Claudio M. Celli, the Vatican undersecretary of foreign relations, signed the agreement of principles in Jerusalem.
Establishing diplomatic ties with Israel offers the Vatican something it never had before: a voice in Jerusalem's future. It now can take some official role in the Arab-Israeli talks, which are expected ultimately to deal with the political control of Jerusalem.
The Vatican says it will insist on an ``internationally guaranteed special status for the safekeeping of religious and cultural values'' in Jerusalem, which is central to the Muslim and Jewish faiths as well.
