Israel Gunboats Shell Ship and Lebanese Port

Israeli gunboats shelled the southern Lebanese port of Sidon on Tuesday, witnesses said, and their guns set afire a merchant ship that the Israeli military said was engaged in suspicious activity.

Eight people, including an Israeli sailor and three crewmen of the merchant ship, were reported wounded.

The Greek captain of the Lebanese merchant ship Roule, Michel Kingares, said the gunboat chased his ship into the port of Sidon and machine-gunned it after he ignored orders to accompany the gunboat to the Israeli port of Haifa.

Muslim militias in Sidon and in the hills east of the city then fired machine guns and anti-tank weapons at the gunboat, the captain said, forcing it to withdraw from the port. However, four Israeli vessels returned about three hours later and began 45 minutes of shelling, setting the Roule on fire, he said. Witnesses added that the fire was put out late in the day and the ship was towed ashore.

As the artillery exchanges continued, gunboat fire reportedly struck the city and the eastern hills, but there were no immediate reports of damage on land or to other ships.

Cement or Arms?

Kingares said Israeli gunboats had shadowed the Roule for three days after its arrival off Lebanon with what he said was 1,200 tons of cement. Sources in Sidon, however, said the Roule was carrying mortars and AK-47 rifles for Palestinian guerrillas loyal to PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat.

Syria and a member of the Lebanese Parliament from Sidon have accused accused Arafat of arming Palestinians in two Sidon refugee camps.

Israeli military officials in Jerusalem said their boats exchanged fire with a merchant ship engaged in “suspicious activity,” but they did not say what the freighter was doing.

The incident followed by two days an Israeli raid on a southern Lebanon village that killed three people and wounded five. That raid was followed Monday by the bombing of Israeli and American targets in Copenhagen. The Islamic Jihad extremist group claimed responsibility for the bombings.