The fighter-bombers caused supersonic booms at around 7:10 pm (1610 GMT), provoking panic on the streets of the capital.

"Two Israeli fighter-bombers broke the sound barrier at very low altitude over Beirut," a senior Lebanese security source told AFP.

"It is the first such supersonic bangs (over Beirut) in years, probably since the Israeli withdrawal" from southern Lebanon in 2000 after 22 years of occupation.

Lebanese army anti-aircraft batteries opened fire at the jets to the south of the capital, a senior security source said on condition of anonymity.

Earlier Tuesday, two Israeli soldiers and a member of the radical Lebanese Shiite Muslim movement Hezbollah were killed during air raids and gun battles across the volatile Israel-Lebanon border.

On Monday, a Hezbollah military commander was blown up in a Beirut car bomb.

Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah said the attack was carried out "either by Israeli hands that infiltrated into Lebanon with European, American or other foreign passports, or at the hands of local Lebanese agents."

A statement by a shadowy Sunni Muslim group called Jund Ash Sham said the bombing was part of a plan to eradicate Shiite "heresy," but the group's leader later denied any involvement and blamed Israel's Mossad spy agency.

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