Soldier hit by ricochet after gunfire strikes IDF post
Army says serviceman unhurt, launches investigation into likely stray fire from across tense frontier
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Bullets struck an IDF post on the Lebanese border, the army reported Wednesday morning, in what was likely a case of stray gunfire.
One soldier was hit by a ricocheting bullet, but was not hurt, the IDF said. His dog tag was perforated.
The army said the shooting was being investigated but “the working theory is stray gunfire.”
“A short time ago, gunfire struck an IDF position in the Metula area,” a Hebrew-language tweet from the army’s official Twitter account said.
“A ricochet hit the post and the dog tag of a soldier guarding in the post,” the army said. “The soldier was examined, but was not hurt.”
בהמשך לפגיעה בעמדת צה"ל במטולה: חייל צה"ל נפגע מרסיס בדיסקית שלו והובא לטיפול רפואי @alonbd pic.twitter.com/2BV3VekguF
— חדשות 13 (@newsisrael13) July 20, 2016
The incident along the tense frontier came as Israel and the Hezbollah terror group in southern Lebanon have been marking 10 years since a bloody war.
The IDF has been bolstering defenses along the northern border, expanding the network of fences and surveillance capabilities, to prepare for a possible war with Hezbollah, the Shiite group that fought a war with Israel in 2006 and has vowed to destroy the Jewish state.
The border has been largely quiet in the ten years since the Second Lebanon War, with Hezbollah’s forces deployed to support Iranian and Assad regime forces in the Syrian civil war.
On Tuesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned that “if the need arises, we will respond to aggression — and the response will be powerful. Whoever thinks they will find ‘spiderwebs’ here will get… an iron fist.”
He was alluding to a 2000 speech by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, in which he called the Jewish state “feebler than a spiderweb.”
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