Fortress fails to save Israelis in Hizbollah danger zone

THE 120mm mortar round which killed three Israeli soldiers on Thursday as they scanned the hills of South Lebanon from the ramparts of Karkum Fortress in the Israeli occupation zone, was fired by Hizbollah guerrillas to the north, writes Patrick Cockburn in Jerusalem.

I visited Karkum, Hebrew for "crocus", in December and walked along the top of the 50ft walls of tumbled stone, broken by gun positions and sentry posts. Soldiers stared into the hills looking for the Hizbollah squads which attacked Karkum three times last year. It is one of the most dangerous Israeli positions in South Lebanon because here the occupation zone is only two and a half miles across. Unlike most of the front-line positions it is manned by Israelis and not by the South Lebanon army. The death of the three soldiers brings to an end a period in which Israeli casualties in Lebanon have been reduced. Since January they had lost only one soldier against 19 Hizbollah claimed as dead - two yesterday.

Demands in Israel for a withdrawal from Lebanon reached a peak last year as losses inflicted by Hizbollah escalated; 219 Israeli soldiers have been killed and 694 wounded in Lebanon since 1985. The army believes it has succeeded in making it more difficult for Hizbollah to infiltrate the occupation zone to lay ambushes or plant roadside bombs.

But the death of three soldiers on the walls of Karkum, despite its array of modern weapons and walls built with all the protective zeal of the Middle Ages, underlines that for the Israeli army, South Lebanon remains a very dangerous place.