AFP Gets Hizballah’s Word Out
Are you curious about Hizballah’s view of the Israeli raid today? Then you’re in luck, because there’s this wire service called Agence France Presse that specializes in stories from the terrorists’ point of view: Hezbollah supporters tell of bold Israeli raid gone wrong.
BUDAY, Lebanon (AFP) - In the eastern Lebanese mountain village of Buday, residents say Hezbollah’s strength combined with Israeli soldiers’ unconvincing Arabic accents proved fatal for a daring commando raid.
And they have little doubt that the raid, which saw one soldier killed in clashes with Hezbollah fighters, targeted an Iranian-linked senior official from the Lebanese Shiite fundamentalist movement, Sheikh Mohammed Yazbek.
Israel said its raid, which drew harsh criticism from Lebanon’s premier and threatened to throw off course a six-day-old truce, was aimed at preventing weapons shipments to Hezbollah from Syria and Iran.
But villagers in Buday, nearly all of them self-described supporters of Hezbollah which in recent days has doled out thousands of dollars in cash to those whose homes have been destroyed in southern Beirut, see a different motive.
“They came to capture Sheikh Yazbek,” says one man who refuses to give his name but describes himself an an interior ministry employee in a town where Hezbollah’s yellow and green flags fly proudly from every corner.