Israelis Round Up S. Lebanon Villagers After Rocket Attack

Israeli troops in tanks and armored vehicles swept into several southern Lebanese towns and rounded up villagers for questioning Thursday after guerrillas fired rockets into northern Israel, security officials said.

The operation came as Israeli warplanes crisscrossed the skies above Lebanon on apparent reconnaissance missions, repeatedly breaking the sound barrier over Beirut and Syrian army positions in eastern Lebanon.

Lebanese military sources said the Israeli aircraft met with only ineffective anti-aircraft fire. Israeli jets last week shot down two Syrian planes that intercepted them during patrols.

In Beirut, sporadic clashes broke out between Christian and Muslim militiamen along the Green Line dividing the city, and snipers killed one person and wounded another in Christian East Beirut, police said.

Force of 100 Israelis

The security officials said 100 Israeli soldiers rolled into the village of Yater aboard personnel carriers, tanks and helicopters late Thursday, searching homes and interrogating residents. Israeli military sources said two rocket launchers were found.

Yater is four miles north of the Israeli border on the edge of an Israeli-created “security zone,” policed by about 1,000 Israeli soldiers and the Israeli-backed South Lebanon Army militia.

A spokesman for the U.N. peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon said there was no shooting in Yater. He said Israeli soldiers arrested one man but later released him.

But Beirut’s Sunni Muslim Voice of the Nation said that about 400 Israelis shot their way into homes as they sealed off several other southern Lebanese villages.

Operation Confirmed

Israeli defense officials confirmed that Israeli troops were searching southern Lebanon for guerrillas who fired Soviet-made Katyusha rockets into Galilee in northern Israel on Thursday, causing slight damage but no casualties in the Jewish settlement of Zarit, 300 yards from the Lebanese border.

The officials provided no other details of the operation.

Similar rocket attacks against Israel helped trigger the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Israel withdrew most of its troops from Lebanon in June but warned that it would avenge attacks on Israel or Israeli forces based in southern Lebanon.