The Syrian-backed Hizbollah group called a meeting of political allies yesterday to discuss options following Monday's Israeli attack on a Syrian base in Lebanon.

Israeli warplanes roared over the Syrian-controlled Bekaa Valley in eastern Lebanon yesterday, a day after Israeli jets killed three Syrian soldiers in an air raid on a Syrian radar base, witnesses said.

Security sources said Israeli planes also carried out reconnaissance missions over southern Lebanon. Israel blasted the radar post in reprisal for a Hizbollah attack that killed an Israeli soldier on Saturday in Shebaa Farms, an area occupied by Israel in 1967 and claimed by Lebanon.

The air strike, which also wounded six Syrian soldiers, sparked fears of a wider regional confrontation. Hizbollah, whose fighter helped force Israeli troops out of southern Lebanon last May, called together "all Lebanese nationalist and Islamic forces" on Tuesday for a strategy meeting at its headquarters in Beirut.

At the same time Syria, Lebanon's political master, was weighing its options. Damascus urged Arabs to stop all contact with Israel in response to the air strike. Vice-President Zuheir Masharqa said Arabs should "work sincerely to confront the dangers posed by Israel and its racial and expansionist policies".

"It is very important that Arabs implement the boycott rules against Israel to force it to accept the requirements of peace," he said in a comment published by the Baath daily, organ of the ruling Baath Party.

Syrian Foreign Minister Farouq Al Shara said the Israeli government had committed a "grave error" and would "receive the appropriate response at the appropriate time" for an attack he described as a "dangerous escalation".

Security sources said Damascus had put its 35,000 troops stationed in Lebanon on high alert. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan accused both Israel and Hizbollah of violating agreements on the Israeli-Lebanese border and said he was "especially dismayed" by Israel's attack on the Syrian position in Lebanon.

He called on the governments concerned and all the parties involved to act with utmost restraint. Saudi Arabia called the raid a "despicable act" and urged a firm stance against what it called Israel's warmongering.

Hizbollah said, however, that it would continue to attack Israeli troops in Shebaa and suggested it might target settlements in northern Israel to avenge the raid on its Syrian backer. The militant group is backed by Syria and Iran.

"The Islamic resistance (Hizbollah) knows when, where and how to strike at the enemy with painful blows," Hizbollah said. Syria considers Hizbollah a key asset in its long-running drive to force Israel into relinquishing the Golan Heights, seized in the 1967 Middle East War and occupied ever since.

The guerrilla group took the lead in defending Syria's military presence in Lebanon after a recent campaign by the Christians and Druze to demand the end of Syria's effective control of Lebanese affairs and the withdrawal of its troops. Monday's raid was the first on a Syrian military position in Lebanon since 1996, and the most serious since Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982.

Hizbollah kept up raids on Shebaa Farms even after Israel ended its 22-year occupation of south Lebanon, on the grounds that the area is Israeli-occupied Lebanese territory, a claim rejected by Israel and the United Nations.

But the tough stance of Hizbollah and Syria is costing them support. "Can Lebanon bear an operation of this kind, with all its political, economic and social consequences?" the Al-Mustaqbal newspaper asked on Sunday. Residents of Lebanese villages facing the frontline Shebaa Farms had started to flee in anticipation of rising violence.