Hezbollah guerrillas have killed the deputy head of the Israeli client militia in south Lebanon.

Colonel Akel Hashem of the South Lebanon Army died when a remote-controlled bomb exploded near his car on the road to his ranch in Dibel in the Israeli-occupied enclave.

Colonel Hashem, second most senior officer in the SLA after its commander Antoine Lahad, was branded a "criminal traitor" by the fundamentalist Shiite movement Hezbollah in a statement.

Israel's deputy defence minister Ephraim Sneh promised to avenge his death.

The colonel, 50, was a former Lebanese army sergeant before he joined the ranks of pro-Israeli militiamen.

He was reported to be about to become the SLA's chief, with Commander Lahad quitting the militia and moving to France. Israel's retired Brigadier General Ammal Assad, who was deputy head of a co-ordinating unit with Lebanon, told Israel radio that this was not the first attempt on Colonel Hashem's life.

He said: "He was one of the bravest commanders in the SLA, one of those who contributed greatly to coexistence and the security of his villages."

The killing is expected to reduce the morale of the SLA, which has been shaken by guerrilla attacks and Israeli talk of withdrawing from Lebanon.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak has pledged to pull the army from southern Lebanon by July, with or without an agreement.

The mainly Christian SLA militia was formed during the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon in 1978.

After invading Lebanon with more than 20,000 troops in retaliation against raids by Palestinian fighters, the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) pulled back, leaving a proxy militia, the SLA, to patrol much of the captured territory.

Air raids

Israel says the zone, set up in 1985, is necessary to protect its northern territory from cross-border guerrilla attacks.

Hezbollah ('the Party of God') emerged in the 1980s, to fight "for the liberation of the occupied territories and the ejection of the aggressive Israeli forces".

The attack on Sunday came a day after SLA militiamen killed two Hezbollah guerrillas in a clash in southern Lebanon.

Earlier on Sunday, Israeli warplanes raided suspected guerrilla positions at Houla, 1.5km from the Israeli border in retaliation for an attack on one of its positions, security officials said.

The army said an anti-aircraft shell was fired by Hezbollah at an Israeli helicopter, but missed.

A few hours after the Houla attack, two Israeli jets fired two air-to-surface missiles on hills near the village of Meiss el-Jabal in the eastern sector of the zone.