Israel wounds 'Hezbollah members' near Blue Line fence with Lebanon

Several members of Lebanon's Hezbollah group have been wounded in a flare-up on the southern fence with Israel, two Lebanese security sources and a source briefed on the developments told the Reuters news agency.

The Israeli military said it used "a non-lethal weapon" to repel "a number of suspects" attempting to damage the security fence with Lebanon to the north.

The United Nations peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon [UNIFIL] told Reuters it was aware of "disturbing reports about an incident along the Blue Line," urging all sides to refrain from escalating given the situation was "extremely sensitive."

The incident took place on the 17th anniversary of the start of a month-long war between Hezbollah and Israel that killed 1,200 people in Lebanon, mostly civilians, and around 160 Israelis, most of them troops fighting Hezbollah.

Both sides fought a devastating war in 2006 after the group captured two Israeli soldiers.

Israel has been building a wall along part of UN Blue Line, which demarcated Lebanon's and Israel's territory in 2000, when Israel ended its two decades of occupation of southern Lebanon.

No official border divides Lebanon and Israel, except the Blue Line, which runs from the Mediterranean to the Israel-occupied Golan Heights to the east.

Lebanon and Israel are technically at war.

Israel's 'annexation' of Ghajar portion

The Lebanese source briefed on developments described the incident as an attack and said several Hezbollah members had been wounded, but could not immediately provide more details.

A Lebanese security source said Israeli troops had fired "something like a grenade" that emitted shrapnel and hurt three Hezbollah members. A second said an Israeli grenade had wounded three people believed to be members of Hezbollah.

A separate source briefed on the incident said Israel had incorporated "preventive technologies" following repeated attempts to sabotage the fence.

That source said one of these technologies, "a non-lethal, landmine-like version of a stun grenade," had gone off on Wednesday and it was "designed to stun, through loud noise."

Reuters could not independently verify the sources' accounts of the developments.

Lebanon last year delineated its maritime frontier with Israel through US-mediated talks, but the land border remains disputed and tensions have risen in recent weeks.

Last week, rockets fired from south Lebanon prompted cross-border strikes by Israel's military.

Lebanon's Foreign Ministry this week said it would file a complaint to the United Nations in New York over what it described as Israel's "annexation" of the northern part of Ghajar, a village straddling the Israel-Lebanon fence.

Lebanon considers it part of its territory, but Ghajar's residents assert an allegiance to Syria.

"This land will not be left to Israelis," Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah said on Wednesday.

"Through cooperation" between Hezbollah, the state and the Lebanese people, "we can get back our occupied land in Ghajar," he added.

Nasrallah also said Hezbollah had set up two tents recently in the Shebaa Farms — one erected in a disputed area — but that the Israelis had "not dared to take any steps on the ground" in response.

In June, Hezbollah said it shot down an Israeli drone that had flown into Lebanon's southern airspace.

In April, Israel's military said soldiers had shot down a drone that entered its airspace from Lebanon, a day after a barrage of rockets was fired into Israel.

A Lebanese parliamentary delegation planning on visiting the southern fence with Israel on Thursday indefinitely postponed the visit "due to the security developments on the border".