"UNIFIL established ... that the trees being cut by the Israeli army are located south of the Blue Line (border) on the Israeli side," said force spokesman Lt. Naresh Bhatt.
Three Lebanese soldiers and an Israeli officer have been killed in the first serious border clash since Israel's 2006 conflict with Lebanon's Hezbollah. A Lebanese journalist also died in the fighting.
Tuesday's clashes began after an Israeli soldier tried to remove a tree along the border, something the military has done in the past to improve its sightlines into Lebanon. The Lebanese military said the Israelis crossed onto Lebanese soil. Lebanese troops opened fire with small arms and rocket-propelled grenades, it said in a statement.
However, UN peacekeepers in southern Lebanon said later on Tuesday there was no evidence that Israeli soldiers had crossed the border, the BBC's Wyre Davies reports.
An Israeli army spokeswoman told the BBC that two officers had been attacked by "snipers from the Lebanese armed forces" in a "well-planned ambush" during maintenance operations on Israel's side of the border, near the town of Kiryat Shemona.
"Sniper fire was directed at their position and as a result two commanders were injured as a result of the firing," he said.
Major-General Gadi Eisenkot, head of Israel's northern command, said Lebanese snipers fired at officers inside Israeli territory. The Israeli army showed reporters blood stains outside a bunker some 100 meters inside its side of the border fence where it said the colonel was shot in the head and another officer was shot in the chest and seriously wounded.
"There were only two or three shots," said an Israeli military spokeswoman. "They were standing there, where the blood is." They were watching other troops move a cherry-picker crane next to a fence behind the demarcation line to trim a tree, whose branches were tripping the fence's electronic anti-infiltration devices, the spokeswoman said.
The dead officer was named as Lt-Col Dov Harari, 45. The Israeli captain wounded along with him was "critically wounded" but was said to be in a stable condition in a Haifa hospital
The fighting flared into Israeli tank, helicopter and artillery strikes near this Lebanese town, but ended after several hours and there was no sign that either side was preparing to escalate.
Hezbollah fighters, who battled Israel four years ago, took no part in the exchange of fire. But Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said the group would not stand silent if Israel attacked the Lebanese army in the future.
The U.N. Security Council urged "utmost restraint." U.S. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said, "The last thing that we want to see is this incident expand into something more significant." Both the U.S. and the U.N. said they were working to determine the exact circumstances of the fight.
i was originally going to make a title about lebanese eco-terrorists, since the incident revolved around a tree....but some people get really pissy when i make humourous titles on these kinds of topics.
"I like my steaks how i like my women. Bloody and all over my face"
"Its like sex, but with a winner!"
MrBubbles Review Threads: Bill Gates, Jak II, Kingdom Hearts II, The Strangers, Sly 2, Crackdown, Zohan, Quarantine, Klungo Sssavesss Teh World, MS@E3'08, WATCHMEN(movie), Shadow of the Colossus, The Saboteur
