At least 22 shells fired from Israel hit open farmland in southern Lebanon close to the frontier, a Lebanese security source in the area said on Wednesday. Earlier in the day an anti-tank missile was fired at an Israeli military vehicle near the frontier with Lebanon, an Israeli army spokesman said. Tensions have escalated in the frontier area linking Lebanon, Israel and Syria in the past ten days since an Israeli air strike on a Hezbollah convoy near the Golan Heights which killed an Iranian Revolutionary Guard general, a Hezbollah commander and the son of the group's late military leader. Both Lebanese group Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran and fought a 34-day war with Israel in 2006, and Iran's Revolutionary Guards have vowed to avenge the deaths.

By Maayan Lubell JERUSALEM (Reuters) - The Israeli military began searching on Wednesday for tunnels that Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas may have dug, responding to concerns from residents of a small nearby village in northern Israel, a military source said. Israel's vulnerability to cross-border tunnels was exposed during a July-August war with Gaza's Islamist Hamas, when Palestinian militants infiltrated through a network of secret passages to carry out attacks. We have no intelligence indicating Hezbollah has dug a tunnel, but anything is possible," the source said. "It is the first time we are conducting a search on this scale." Residents of in the area, under fire from Hezbollah rockets during a month-long war in 2006, have at times reported underground noises and fear that militants are digging tunnels.