Israel resumes airstrikes in Lebanon
Israeli troops met fierce resistance from Hezbollah guerrillas today as they crossed into Lebanon to seek tunnels and weapons after warning residents in a nearly 20 mile swath of the south along the border to flee.
Israeli warplanes battered south Beirut again a day after a wave of bombings killed as many as 70 people, according to Lebanese television, making it the deadliest day since the fighting began on July 12.
A large fight between Israeli forces and Hezbollah guerrillas also broke out this evening on the Lebanese side of the border, the Israeli army said. It said its troops suffered several casualties.
At least 306 people have been killed in Lebanon since the Israeli campaign began, according to the security forces control room that collates casualties. Twenty-nine Israelis have been killed, including 14 soldiers. The UN has said at least a half million people have been displaced in Lebanon.
Israel’s series of small ground forays across the border have aimed to push back Hezbollah guerrillas who have continued to fire rockets into northern Israel despite more than a week of massive Israeli bombardment against them - raising the question of whether air power alone can suppress them. Guerrillas fired 25 rockets into Israel on Thursday, which caused no casualties.
Last night an Israeli military radio station beamed into south Lebanon issued a warning telling “all residents south of the Litani to evacuate” – raising fears of a ground assault.
The Litani lies about 20 miles north of the border, running roughly parallel to it and numerous towns, including Tyre lie south of it.
The Al-Mashriq station has continually issued evacuation calls for individual villages and towns in the south, warning of imminent strikes, some of which occur and some have not.
The guerrillas have been fighting back hard against Israel’s ground forays, wounding three Israeli soldiers in a fierce gunbattle earlier, a day after killing two.
In another clash, just across the border from the Israeli town of Avivim, guerrillas fired an anti-tank missile at an Israeli tank, seriousl wounding one soldier. Hezbollah said in a statement that its guerrillas destroyed two Israeli tanks as they tried to enter the Lebanese border village of Maroun al-Ras, across from Avivim.
Israel has mainly limited itself to attacks from the air and sea, reluctant to send in ground troops on terrain dominated by Hezbollah.
But an Israeli army spokesman refused to rule out the possibility of a full-scale invasion.
“There is a possibility – all our options are open. At the moment, it’s a very limited, specific incursion but all options remain open,” Capt. Jacob Dallal, an Israeli army spokesman, said.
Hezbollah said it was “fully ready” to confront any possible Israeli ground offensive and dismissed Israeli claims to have destroyed half the guerrillas’ arsenal of missiles.
Mahmoud Koumati, deputy leader of Hezbollah’s political bureau, told the Lebanese Broadcasting Corp. television the group has enough missiles to fight Israel for “long months.”
The Lebanese government is under international pressure to deploy troops in the south to rein in Hezbollah guerrillas – but even before the fighting many considered it too weak to do so without deeply fracturing the country.
last night the Israeli military said that aircraft dropped 23 tons of explosives on what the military believed was a bunker used by senior Hezbollah leaders in the Bourj al-Barajneh neighbourhood of Beirut between 8pm and 9pm.
Hezbollah said none of its members were hurt in the strike and denied a leadership bunker was in the area, saying a building under construction to be a mosque was hit.
Hezbollah has a headquarters compound in Bourj al-Barajneh that is off limits to the Lebanese police and army, so security officials could not confirm the strike.
Israel’s UN Ambassador Dan Gillerman said his country would not issue a statement about the attack until it is sure of all the facts. But he added, “I can assure you that we know exactly what we hit. ... This was no religious site. This was indeed the headquarters of the Hezbollah leadership.”
Today Israeli jets struck houses believed used by Hezbollah officials in the town of Hermel in the western Bekaa Valley, wounding at least three.
Five minutes later, Israeli fighter jets also attacked and destroyed a five-story residential and commercial building that reportedly once had a Hezbollah office in the Bekaa Valley city of Baalbek, a Hezbollah stronghold, witnesses said. There was no immediate word on casualties.
Two civilians were killed last night in strikes on bridges in Lebanon’s far north, near Tripoli, the National News Agency said.
Israeli jets also raided a detention centre in the town of Khiam in south Lebanon Thursday, witnesses and local TV said.
The notorious Khiam prison, formerly run by Israel’s Lebanese militia allies during its occupation of south Lebanon, was destroyed in four bombing runs by Israeli jets, they said.
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