QALAMOUN, Lebanon — With the fourth salvo of rockets fired at Israel from southern Lebanon in the last four days, this issue has grown into a serious political and military embarrassment for the Lebanese government and also (and perhaps more so) for Hezbollah.

The first salvo of rockets was launched July 11, near Lebanon's southeastern border with Israel. The Lebanese army arrested two suspects; it was eventually determined that they belonged to Sunni Islamist forces. One of the men was suffering from severe burns on his body from the rocket firing.

Over the next three days, the show moved from the southeast to the southwest along the coast, from a region with a Sunni and Druze majority to a demographic triangle of Shiite landowners, Palestinian refugees and Syrian refugees and workers. During July 12-14, three rocket launches were reported, fired at night from the al-Qalilah plain toward Israel, but landing on beaches in southern Lebanon. The launch site is around 10 kilometers (6 miles) south of Tyre and less than 8 kilometers (5 miles) north of the Lebanese-Israeli border.

The Rashidiya Palestinian refugee camp lies approximately two kilometers (a mile) north of the likely launch site, leading to early speculation, before arrests were made, that a resident or residents might have launched the rockets in solidarity with fellow Palestinians in Gaza. Suspicion also fell on Syrian seasonal agricultural workers and refugees in dozens of camps near the launch site.