Nov. 15, 2006 0:02 | Updated Nov. 15, 2006 0:15
IDF: Covert Hizbullah units return to northern border

By YAAKOV KATZ
Exactly three months after a UN-brokered cease-fire ended Israel's war in Lebanon, IDF officers told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday that Hizbullah gunmen disguised as civilians were back on the border and collecting intelligence on IDF positions.

Although 15,000 Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) and 8,000 UNIFIL soldiers were deployed in southern Lebanon, between the border and the Litani River, the IDF said Hizbullah still had a presence in the area.

"They [Hizbullah] are still there," an officer in the Northern Command said. "We are watching them and they are watching us."

Armed Hizbullah men, the officer said, were no longer along the border like it was before the war, when it maintained military outposts right next to Israel.

But he said, the Hizbullah operatives lived in villages along the border and were spotted conducting surveillance on Israel.

"They are there but they cannot operate freely like they used to," the officer said. "There is UNIFIL and the LAF there and this does complicate things for them."

UNIFIL rejected IDF allegations that Hizbullah guerrillas had returned to the border. The UN force's chief liaison officer, Col. Alexan Lalan, told the Post Tuesday that the IDF's actions, in particular the daily IAF flyovers, were strengthening Hizbullah and creating new militants for the Shi'ite group.

"The flyovers harm the credibility of UNIFIL, the credibility of the LAF and the credibility of the state of Lebanon," Lalan said in a phone interview from his office in the southern Lebanese town of Naqoura.

"Every flyover creates new Hizbullah militants and new sympathy for Hizbullah since it shows and demonstrates that UNIFIL and the LAF are not powerful and able to stop them," Lalan said.