LAF soldiers then began shouting at the engineers to walk away from the fence, a command the engineers evidently ignored.  It was when they moved their equipment into place, including the fence-overreaching crane caught by the controversial AP photo, that Lebanese snipers opened fire -- not on the engineers themselves, it's crucial to note, but on the military escort stationed 300 meters away.  It was this initial round of sniper fire in which Israeli senior commander Lt. Col. Dov Harari was lethally shot in the head and Capt. Ezra Lakiya was critically wounded in the chest.

The IDF retaliated with artillery, tank and then Apache helicopter munitions, targeting various LAF positions including a command centre in the nearby village of Al Taybeh, which was badly damaged along with several personnel carriers. In total, three LAF soldiers and one Lebanese journalist were killed during this first, uninterrupted exchange of fighting before a temporary ceasefire was agreed to by the Israelis in order to allow the Lebanese to retrieve their wounded.  This ceasefire was broken 30 minutes later when an LAF team launched a rocket-propelled grenade at an IDF tank, which the RPG missed.

The entire skirmish lasted just over two and a half hours.

The Lebanese military's immediate reaction was to accuse Israel of starting the deadly exchange by crossing into Lebanese territory, a claim that UNIFIL has now debunked. It also alleged that its troops only fired warning shots into the air as an opening salvo and were then set upon by the IDF. But after UNIFIL backed Israel's territorial position, one LAF spokesman cited by the Lebanese daily newspaper An-Nahar admitted that his army did indeed take aim against the Israelis, but only ‘to defend Lebanon's sovereignty.' 

Diplomatically, Beirut has struck a defiant posture. Following the clash, President Michael Suleiman entreated the LAF and the entire nation to ‘stand up to Israel's violation of Resolution 1701, whatever the price', a threat that some international observers have feared could draw both countries into another devastating war.  Although Israel has officially placed responsibility for the violence squarely on the LAF, unofficially there is a more-than-meets-the-eye explanation gaining momentum. 

IDF Lt. Col. Ilan Dikstein, deputy commander of the unit supervising the brush-clearing, told Israeli daily Ha'aretz on Thursday: ‘This wasn't a random incident of one soldier or some crazy private. This was a preplanned army operation.' Dikstein's supposition was bolstered that evening when Beirut's al-Manar television station quoted an unnamed LAF source who said that the order to fire on the Israelis had ‘come directly from the [army] command'. Not coincidently, then, did the IDF briefing on the event begin with a section titled ‘Hezbollah's influence on the Lebanese Armed Forces', citing the infiltration of the Islamist group into the ranks of the LAF as being more or less simultaneous with an uptick in verbal and physical threats against Israeli soldiers by Lebanese counterparts along the border.