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Rockets fired near ceremony attended by Hezbollah in north Lebanon

Other News Materials 16 March 2008 22:08 (UTC +04:00)

( dpa )- Two rocket-propelled grenades were fired Sunday near a ceremony being held for a missing Lebanese militant and attended by a Hezbollah parliamentarian, police said.

Hezbollah MP Hussein al-Haj Hassan was addressing the event at the time in Minya, north of Tripoli, to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the suspected abduction by Israel of militant Yehya Skaff. The incident did not stop the ceremony and no casualties were reported.

The rockets were fired despite heavy measures of the Lebanese internal security forces after Sunni Muslim Minya residents threatened to sabotage the ceremony if Hezbollah attended.

Minya is considered a stronghold of supporters of Lebanon's Western-backed government which is locked in a deep political crisis with the Hezbollah-led opposition, backed by Syria and Iran.

Hezbollah followers have accused members of the Future Movement, led by the head of the ruling majority Saad Hariri.

The ceremony was for Skaff, a militant who fought alongside the main Palestine Liberation Organisation faction Fatah and is thought to have taken part in a bus hijacking in northern Israel that left at least 35 Israelis dead in the late 1970s.

Hezbollah claims that Skaff has been jailed in Israel for the past 30 years, but Israel has denied that Skaff is among Lebanese still jailed in Israel.

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