Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon said Wednesday that he holds the Lebanese government and the Lebanese Armed Forces responsible for the shooting death of an IDF soldier on the border Sunday night.
An initial IDF assessment, based on data from lookout positions on the border, found that St.-Sgt. Maj. Shlomi Cohen was hit by shots fired by a soldier from the Lebanese Armed Forces, who apparently acted alone.
Ya'alon said that Israeli and Lebanese army representatives would be meeting Wednesday, along with UN peacekeepers in order to discuss the circumstances of the shooting.
"We will demand that the Lebanese army first of all provides an explanation of exactly what happened there, and whether this is really a rogue soldier, what they did with him, and what the Lebanese army plans to do to prevent incidents of this type," Ya'alon stated.
"We will not tolerate a violation of our sovereignty along any border, certainly not the Lebanon border," he added.
According to the official Lebanon National News Agency, the Lebanese soldier who fired shots across the Israeli border returned to his post on Monday after having gone missing Sunday night after the shooting.
The Lebanon National News Agency also reported that Israel was carrying out "intensive" flights at low altitude over Lebanese air space.
After the shooting, IDF soldiers spotted suspicious figures on the Lebanese side of the border, and opened fire at them. An IDF source said it was not immediately clear if there were casualties on the Lebanese side of the border as a result.
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