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    JERUSALEM, May 28 (Xinhua) -- Israel stopped artillery and air strikes in southern Lebanon on Sunday, ending a day of cross-border clashes with militants in Lebanon, after a ceasefire was reached with UN mediation.

    

Lebanese soldiers patrol the southern village of Kfar Kila, on the border with Israel. Israeli fighter jets bombed Palestinian and Lebanese militant targets in Lebanon after guerrillas fired rockets into Israel in the fiercest cross-border violence seen this year.(AFP/Ali Diya)

The clashes began with rockets attacks on northern Israel from Lebanon, followed by gun battles on Israel-Lebanon border area, which left two Israeli soldiers wounded and two militants in Lebanon dead, Israel's Yedioth Ahronoth reported.

    By Sunday evening, all parties concerned reached a ceasefire with the meditation by UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL).

    "Following intensive contacts with all parties throughout Sunday, UNIFIL has succeeded in obtaining a ceasefire which should take effect on the ground," said Milos Strugel, spokesman for UNIFIL.

    Israeli residents in northern communities, who were asked to go to shelters and security rooms, have been permitted to go home, said the report.

    On Sunday at dawn, three Katyusha rockets fired from Lebanon toward northern Israel hit a building in an Israel Air Force base in Mount Meron, some 10 km from the northern Israeli-Lebanese border.

    One Israeli soldier was lightly wounded in the rockets attack.

    In a retaliatory response to the rocket attack, Israeli Air Force carried out air raids on two bases of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Command (PFLP-GC), one of which was in Sultan Yaacub, less than 10 km from the border with Syria and another in Naameh, about 10 km south of Beirut.

    One Palestinian militant was killed and five others injured during the air strikes.

    Sunday afternoon, gun battles erupted between Israeli soldiers and Hizbollah guerrillas along the Lebanese-Israeli border, which left a Hizbollah fighter killed and two Lebanese civilians and another Israeli soldier wounded.

    The Israeli army had told residents in the Manara and Margaliot communities along the northern border area to enter bomb shelters.

    Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert warned in the afternoon of a "harsh response" if gunmen in Lebanon did not stop attacks.

    "Israel will give them (gunmen in Lebanon) a clear and harsh response without hesitation if they do not stop attacks," Olmert said.

    Sunday's border clashes were the latest flare-up of violence since a Palestinian militant was killed on Friday in southern Lebanon.

    Israel withdrew its troops from southern Lebanon in 2000.

    However, sporadic clashes with Hizbollah militants based in southern Lebanon have been witnessed over the border area in the past six years. Enditem