Lebanese and Israeli officials have confirmed that at 6:30 a.m. on July 11, unidentified parties fired two missiles from Hasbaya, in southeastern Lebanon, toward Israel. The Israeli response was swift. Minutes after the rockets fell, Israeli army artillery shelled the area where the rockets originated as well as surrounding forest. Lebanese authorities indicated that an earlier attempt at a rocket launch had been made hours before, at 2 a.m., but the rocket, at a nearby location, had exploded on the ground due to a technical malfunction.
About two hours after the successful firings, Lebanese authorities disseminated a story that the army had conducted a comprehensive field survey of the area and had found two 107-caliber Katyusha rockets. More important, the army was for awhile able to track the suspect who had fired the missiles. According to the army, he was wounded and taken to a hospital in the region. The army is trying to identify the hospital to arrest him.
