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| 40 Lebanese dead in Israeli strikes |
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Thursday, August 03, 2006
BOURJ AL-MULOUK, Lebanon: Israel blasted at Hizbollah on Wednesday with 8,000 soldiers on the ground, heavy bombing and a daring commando raid, but the guerrilla group remained resilient — sending its biggest and deepest volley of rocket attacks ever into Israel.
Three weeks into the fighting, Israel’s battle looked likely to be bitter and long. In Lebanon, villagers wept as heavy machinery carried off the bodies of those killed in the overnight raid against a Hizbollah stronghold, while across northern Israel, forests and fields lay scorched from rocket fire.
Hopes for a ceasefire dimmed despite a plea from Pope Benedict XVI for the international community to find a quick solution. But Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said his country would stop its offensive only after a robust international peacekeeping force was in place in southern Lebanon, to protect Israel from border raids and rocket attack.
He predicted the fighting would create “new momentum” for Israel’s plan to separate from the Palestinians by pulling out of the West Bank. On the first full day of its massive ground push, Israeli military officials said Hizbollah was putting up resistance as troops went from village to village in south Lebanon to clear them of guerrillas.
But the officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they could easily dash inland to the Litani River-their final objective about 18 miles from the border — but instead chose to move methodically so as not to leave pockets of resistance.
The Israeli forces were believed to be just two miles inside the Lebanese border in most spots. Hizbollah’s retaliation was fierce — both on the ground and by air. It launched its deepest strikes yet, and also fired a record number of more than 210 rockets into Israel. One hit near the town of Beit Shean, about 42 miles inside Israel, the deepest rocket strike into Israel so far, while another stray missile hit the West Bank for the first time.
Hizbollah said it had fired a second round of Khaibar-1 rockets on the central Israeli town of Afula, south of Haifa. An Israeli-American man was killed as he fled for home by bicycle near a northern town, and another 21 were injured elsewhere across Israel. The announcement came hours after the guerrillas struck deeper into Israel than ever before, landing Khaibar-1s near Beit Shean and between towns in the West Bank.
A Hizbollah statement broadcast its Al-Manar TV said the guerrillas also fired a new barrage of rockets at the Israeli seaside town of Acre, north of Haifa. It said the guerrillas destroyed an Israeli tank in the area, and were preventing Israeli troops from retrieving the tank and some wounded soldiers.
In Lebanon, the civilian death toll reached far higher: 16 killed overnight during the Israeli commando raid and accompanying air strikes around the Hizbollah stronghold of Baalbek near the Syrian border.
The attack, the deepest strike north by Israel so far, was led by commandos who flew in by helicopter before dawn, capturing five Hizbollah guerrillas and killing at least 10, said Israel’s army chief Lt-Gen Dan Halutz. Witnesses said the Israeli forces partially destroyed the Dar al-Hikma hospital in Baalbek, which residents said is financed by an Iranian charity close to Hizbollah.
The Israel Air Force deputy commander, Col Yochanan Loker, described the site as “a Hizbollah headquarters located inside the hospital ... Weapons were found within the hospital in offices, in drawers.”
Israel had not yet released the identity of those captured. When asked by The Associated Press whether any were “big fish,” Olmert said: “They are tasty fishes.”
A Hizbollah official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to give official statements to the media, said that Israeli troops captured “four or five” people, but not at the hospital, and denied they were Hizbollah fighters. Commandos also took away computers, disks and documents for intelligence analysis, said Army Col Nitzan Alon, who led the Israeli ground forces on the mission.
As they swept the building, they came under fire by anti-tank missiles from neighbouring buildings. Israeli jets fired missiles at the surrounding guerrilla force as the fighting at the hospital raged, the military said. One struck the nearby village of Al Jamaliyeh, hitting the house of the village’s mayor, Hussein Jamaleddin, and instantly killing his son, brother, and five other relatives.
Weeping as he walked in a funeral procession hours later, Jamaleddin pulled at the limbs of the dead, carried to a cemetery in the bucket of a yellow front-loader. “This is the leg of my son. He was a sportsman, he did tae kwan do,” Jamaleddin wailed.
In a blitz of strikes within just one hour on Wednesday evening, Israel conducted 27 raids in the region around the port of Tyre, killing seven people. An 80-year-old couple died when their house in Tair Harfa collapsed after being hit and five people were crushed to death under the rubble of a three-storey house in the village of Yarun, police said.
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ISSN 1563-9479 
