Israeli army warns Lebanon after rockets land in Galilee

Several rockets fired from southern Lebanon landed into Israel overnight, prompting the Jewish state's army to warn Beirut early Tuesday to work to prevent similar attacks in the future.

The rockets, which landed in the western Galilee region, caused no casualities, the army said in a statement.

But it warned: "The Israeli army considers that it is a serious incident and believes that it is the responsibility of the Lebanese government and the Lebanese army to avoid this kind of attacks."

An Israeli military spokesman said the rockets were the first fired since 2009 across a border where a 34-day war was fought in 2006 between Israel and Iranian-backed Hezbollah guerrillas based in Lebanon.

"Several rockets hit the western Galilee. The Israeli army considers the incident severe and is targeting origins of fire," said a statement from the military spokesman's office.

The Ynet news Web site said residents saw plumes of smoke where the rockets struck.

Israeli public radio reported that four rockets had landed in Israel -- one caused minor damage, while another landed in a populated area but failed to explode.

Local military commanders were assessing the situation but people in northern Israel, where the rockets landed, had not been told to go to air raid shelters, said an army spokesman.

The last incident at the Israeli-Lebanese border dates back to August 1, when soldiers from the two countries exchanged fire along the the Blue Line, the UN-drawn border.

A similar incident more than a year earlier left two Lebanese soldiers, a journalist and a senior Israeli officer dead.

And in May 2011, Israeli troops killed 10 people and wounded more than 110 others on Sunday on the border in south Lebanon during a Palestinian refugee protest to mark the anniversary of the 1948 creation of the Jewish state, which Palestinians term the "naqba," or catastrophe.

Compiled from AFP and Reuters stories by the Daily News staff.