Israeli commandos abducted a ranking Shiite Moslem clergyman and two others from a house in southern Lebanon early Friday and took them to Israel following a shoot-out with a guard, police sources said.
The sources said about 25 commandos landed in a helicopter near the village of Jibchit before dawn and snatched Sheikh Abdel Karim Obeid from his house under cover of darkness.The official Iranian news agency IRNA said one of Obeid's neighbors who witnessed the raid was shot dead by Israeli troops. The report could not be independently confirmed. Obeid, a Shiite clergyman and ranking member of the militant pro-Iranian Hezbollah organization, is widely believed to have been the mastermind of several hit-and-run attacks on Israeli troops and the Feb. 17, 1988, kidnapping of U.S. Marine Lt. Col. William Higgins.
Security sources said two of Obeid's relatives, Ahmad Obeid and Hashem Fahas, who were in the house at the time - both of them members of Hezbollah - also were abducted while Obeid's wife was bound, gagged and locked in a room.
The commandos exchanged gunfire with a guard outside the house before they stormed the building, according to security sources and the Christian Voice of Lebanon radio station, which made no mention of casualties.
Witnesses said Obeid appeared to be blindfolded as he was forcibly dragged from the house.
A television cameraman for British World Wide Television News, who visited the scene hours after the raid, said field commanders of the pro-Syrian Shiite Amal group, which controls the Nabatiyeh district, believe Obeid was injured. The clergyman's bed was stained with blood, and there were three bullet holes in the battered front door.
Israeli troops tried unsuccesfully to abduct Obeid two years ago while he was taking part in a guerrilla attack, security sources said.
Higgins, 43, head of U.N. peacekeeping forces in Lebanon, was kidnapped by Hezbollah gunmen near the southern port city of Tyre and is believed to be one of 17 foreigners held hostage in southern Lebanon.
The Organization of the Oppressed on Earth, an offshoot faction of Hezbollah, has claimed responsibility for Higgins' kidnapping and has warned it plans to kill him on grounds he worked as a spy for Israel.
One source said the late leader of the mainstream Shiite Moslem Amal militia in southern Lebanon, Daoud Daoud, sent a group of his followers to obtain Higgins' release from Obeid's apartment, but the force was encircled by Hezbollah gunmen, stripped of its weapons and sent back.
The source said the Organization of the
Oppressed on Earth later took Higgins out of Jibchit to another village in south Lebanon and then to the slums of south Beirut.
Daoud and Mahmoud Faqih, another Amal leader, were assassinated by unknown gunmen in south Beirut's seaside suburb of Ouzai on Sept. 22, 1988. Amal blamed the killings on Hezbollah.