Five men were charged yesterday with the killing of Pte Rooney in the south of Lebanon, a stronghold of the Iran-backed group.

The 23 year old was killed during an attack last December.

Israel launched airstrikes and artillery attacks in response to rockets fired from south Lebanon.

Private Sean Rooney, 23, was killed and three others injured when their vehicle was attacked

Sources have told French press agency AFP that the UN vehicle was ‘the target of gunfire from at least two people’.

Gunfire broke out at a protest against the judge investigating last year’s blast at the city’s port.

One of four men were found guilty today.

The tribunal’s long-awaited decision comes two weeks after a cataclysmic blast at Beirut port.

Israel and Hezbollah have exchanged fire along the Lebanese border.

Mustafa Badreddine, who was on a US terror sanctions blacklist and wanted by Israel, was killed in a blast on Thursday night.

Earlier this week the EU decided to add Hezbollah’s ‘military wing’ to its list of terror organisations.

Some EU Member States want to blacklist Hezbollah as a terrorist organisation.

The blast comes amid spiralling tension in Lebanon over the civil war raging in neighbouring Syria.

Fierce clashes continued for a second day between the army and gunmen loyal to a radical Sunni cleric in the Lebanon.

Benjamin Netanyahu’s signalling of a return to “business as usual” may indicate that Israel does not expect an immediate retaliation for this weekend’s airstrikes.

The Minister for Justice also told an Israeli newspaper that he had been the target of some anti-Semitism during his time in politics but that it had been “extremely rare”.

The news comes as 50 people are arrested in connection with the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi last week.

President Obama says the issue of Syrian WMDs is two-fold, raising fears that chemical or biological weapons may fall into the hands of anti-Israeli extremists.

The United States has suffered a huge security setback after several CIA operatives in two distinct networks were captured by Iran and Hezbollah. The informants are feared dead.

The Syrian President said that Western intervention in his country’s uprising would trigger massive unrest that would “burn the whole region.”

Many fear that tensions over the tribunal investigating the death of Prime Minister Rafik Hariri could plunge the country into a new crisis.

Protests continue in Egypt following yesterday’s deaths, as demonstrators demand an end to repression and governmental corruption. Meanwhile in Tunisia, the interim government has said it will bow to the will of the people and reshuffle the cabinet today.

A UN tribunal criticises Hezbollah after the group calls for its work to be boycotted.