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Israel pounds lebanon { June 2006 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
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Israel pounds Lebanon
Reuters
Jul 17, 2006 — By Lin Noueihed
BEIRUT - Israel bombarded Lebanon for a sixth day on Monday and dismissed as premature a proposal for an international stability force to help end the worst fighting across the Israeli-Lebanese border in more than 20 years.
Israeli warplanes hit coastal targets in the north and south, struck Beirut and damaged homes in the east belonging to members of the Hezbollah guerrilla group, which fired more rockets into the Jewish state.
The fighting, the worst since Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982, was triggered when Hezbollah, which is backed by Syria and Iran and is part of the Lebanese government, seized two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid on northern Israel last week.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Security Council members would start hammering out a detailed agreement on deploying a multilateral security force to south Lebanon.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair said the force would be essential to stop Hezbollah rocket attacks and give Israel a reason to halt strikes which have ruined much of Lebanon's civilian infrastructure.
But Israel said it was too soon to talk of sending the force. "We're at the stage where we want to be sure that Hezbollah is not deployed at our northern border," government spokeswoman Miri Eisin said.
She said there were no plans to halt the offensive "as of yet," while Army Radio quoted Israel's chief of staff as saying Israel planned to enforce a 1 km (0.5 mile) "security zone" to keep Hezbollah away from the border.
Hezbollah is seeking the release of Lebanese and Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. It has not commented on international efforts to halt the fighting.
Echoing a muted call from the Group of Eight powers on Sunday, the European Union will urge all sides on Monday to work to end Middle East violence, according to a draft text. The EU text stopped short of demanding an immediate ceasefire.
Israel's campaign has killed 179 people, all but 13 of them civilians, and wounded more than 500. The dead include seven Canadians killed in a strike on a southern village on Sunday.
Twenty-four Israelis have been killed in the fighting, including 12 civilians hit in rocket attacks.
ISRAELI STRIKES
Israeli raids on Monday destroyed two army posts on the northern Lebanese coast, killing at least six Lebanese soldiers, and damaged the homes of Hezbollah officials in eastern Lebanon, killing 11 people in over 60 strikes.
Seven more people died in strikes south of Beirut, including one on a coastal road linking it to the port city of Sidon.
Several thunderous blasts echoed over the capital and black smoke rose from a blazing fuel storage depot in the Christian suburb of Dora. Civilian installations, petrol stations and factories elsewhere were also hit, security sources said.
Beirut's stock market remained closed after falling 14 percent last week.
Israel is demanding the disarming of Hezbollah in line with U.N. Security Council resolutions -- a task that is beyond a fragile Lebanese government.
Lebanon, just emerging from three decades of Syrian tutelage, fears that any attempt to tackle Hezbollah directly would re-ignite civil war and split its army.
Hezbollah rocketed Haifa on Sunday, killing eight people in its deadliest attack on Israel, prompting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to warn of far-reaching consequences for Lebanon.
Hezbollah promised more "surprises."
Israel's army later said Hezbollah rockets struck a town 50 km (33 miles) south of the border. The group said it had also rocketed the towns of Nahariya and Acre in northern Israel.
An Israeli army spokesman said Hezbollah had fired about 20 rockets at Israel overnight, wounding several people. More than 100 rockets had crashed across the border in 24 hours, it said.
France, the United States, Britain and a host of other nations scrambled to evacuate their citizens from Lebanon. More than 1,000 Germans, mostly of Lebanese origin, gathered in Beirut's Hamra district on Monday to await evacuation.
Thousands of foreigners have fled overland to Syria since Thursday, despite Israeli air strikes on main roads.
Israel's campaign in Lebanon followed the launch of its offensive in the Gaza Strip on June 28 to try to retrieve another captured soldier and halt Palestinian rocket fire.
Israeli air strikes on Monday flattened the eight-storey Palestinian Foreign Ministry building in Gaza City and gutted the offices of a Hamas-led force in the northern Gaza Strip.
In the occupied West Bank, Palestinian gunmen ambushed a group of Israeli troops, killing one and wounding six others in the old city of Nablus, witnesses and military sources said.
Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed wing of President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah faction, claimed responsibility for the Nablus ambush, in which a bomb targeted an Israeli patrol.
(Additional reporting by Jerusalem bureau, Nadim Ladki, Alaa Shahine and Laila Bassam)
Copyright 2006 Reuters News Service. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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