BEIRUT, Lebanon — Israeli jets blasted a Palestinian militant group's base a few miles outside the Lebanese capital Beirut today, hours after rockets fired from Lebanon hit a northern Israeli border town.

In their deepest strike into Lebanon in 18 months, the Israeli planes attacked a base of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, a small, Syrian-backed group that has been fighting the Jewish state for decades. Two guerrillas were lightly wounded, the group said.

Later today, Israeli warplanes flew low over southern Lebanon and the western Bekaa Valley in apparent reconnaissance flights that drew anti-aircraft fire from the Lebanese army, Lebanese security officials said.

The Israeli army said the attack was in response to rockets fired at the northern Israel town of Kiryat Shmona on Tuesday night. It said it views such attacks with "extreme severity" and holds Lebanon responsible.

The PFLP-GC commander in Lebanon, Anwar Raja, denied the group was responsible.

ROME — Italian authorities, fearing a possible terrorist attack on the Winter Olympics in Turin, are conducting surveillance on "numerous" people through telephone wiretaps and other intelligence operations, an Italian official said.Luigi Rinella, the Italian police's liaison with the U.S. government, said those under surveillance included suspected Islamic militants, but he stressed that anti-globalization protesters and anarchists could also make trouble during the Feb. 10 to 26 Games."Clearly at this moment, the sensibility is to groups that we call Islamic terrorist that are connected to al-Qaida," he told The Associated Press.Rinella said the surveillance involved telephone wiretaps and other forms of interceptions. But he noted that such activities were also used in drug-trafficking intelligence-gathering operations, and not just anti-terrorism operations.He denied a statement attributed to him in a report by USA Today that at least 700 people were being monitored.