Twelve die as Israeli jets pound south Lebanon
Israeli warplanes and artillery intensified strikes today, hitting Hezbollah positions and crushing houses and roads in towns in southern Lebanon, killing as many as 12 people, officials said.
Hezbollah said it launched an assault on troops in a small border village seized by Israeli forces last weekend.
The United Nations decided to pull 50 unarmed observers out of their posts along the border and move them in with lightly armed peacekeepers for their protection. One strike Friday hit a convoy evacuating trapped residents from a village, lightly wounding a journalist and his driver.
Hezbollah announced it used a new rocket, the Khaibar-1 – named after a famed battle between Islam’s prophet Muhammad and Jewish tribes in the Arabian peninsula – to strike at the Israeli town of Afula, its deepest yet into Israel.
Five rockets hit outside the town but caused no injured, Israeli police said.
In the 17th day of warfare, diplomatic efforts to end the crisis were emerging on several fronts as allies pressed Washington to speed up efforts to secure a cease-fire.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, attending a regional security conference in Malaysia, announced plans to return to the Middle East after visits to Lebanon and Israel earlier in the week.
Israeli media reported that she will land in Israel tomorrow night and meet with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert tomorrow. There was no word from Lebanese officials or media on whether she would come to Beirut.
Rice has argued against an immediate cease-fire, calling for a more “enduring” arrangement that would end Hezbollah’s control of southern Lebanon and diminish the influence of Syria and Iran in Lebanon’s affairs.
During a meeting in Rome on Wednesday, Rice faced strong demand from European governments for an immediate halt to fighting. But the failure to win consensus won extra time for Israel’s military campaign against Hezbollah.
US President George Bush has suggested he would support the offensive for as long as it would take to cripple Hezbollah.
He also sharply condemned Iran for providing military support to the guerrillas – a charge that Iran’s Foreign Ministry denied on Friday.
In France, President Jacques Chirac said his country will press for the rapid adoption of a UN Security Council resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire in Lebanon, his office said. It cited the “deterioration of the humanitarian situation in Lebanon.” France hoped to circulate a draft resolution in the coming days.
Israel said its warplanes hit 130 targets in Lebanon yesterday and early today, including a Hezbollah base in the Bekaa Valley, where long-range rockets were stored and 57 Hezbollah structures, six missile launching sites and six communication facilities.
The bombardment – along with artillery pounding the south – was often hitting in populated areas and causing casualties
An airstrike flattened a house in the village of Hadatha, and six people inside were believed dead or wounded, the state news agency reported. Hezbollah’s al-Manar TV said all six were dead.
Missiles fired by Israeli jets also destroyed three buildings in the village of Kfar Jouz near the market town of Nabatiyeh, killing three and wounding nine people, including four children, Lebanese security officials said. The raid apparently targeted an apartment belonging to a Hezbollah activist.
The toll from the strike could rise. Civil defence teams were struggling in Kfar Jouz to rescue some people believed buried under the rubble of one of the buildings, a three-story structure, witnesses said.
Three women were killed in strikes on their homes in southern villages of Talouseh, Sheitiyeh and Bazouriyeh, the hometown of Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, security officials said.
Israeli artillery also fired more than 40 shells at the village of Arnoun just outside Nabatiyeh, next to the strategic Crusader’s Beaufort Castle, which has a commanding view of the border area, witnesses said.
At least 443 people have been killed in Lebanon since fighting broke out between Israeli forces and Hezbollah guerrillas, most of them Lebanese civilians, according to security officials. But Lebanon’s health minister estimated Thursday that as many as Lebanese 600 civilians have been killed so far in the offensive.
Thirty-three Israeli soldiers have died in the fighting and 19 civilians were killed in Hezbollah’s unyielding rocket attacks on Israel’s northern towns, the army said.
Hezbollah guerrillas battled Israeli troops on the border Friday as Israeli warplanes struck houses and roads renewed attacks on suspected guerrilla targets in southern Lebanon, killing three people and wounding nine, including four children, in raids on three buildings near the market town of Nabatiyeh, Lebanese security officials said.
Hezbollah said its guerrillas attacked Israeli troops in the border village of Maroun al-Ras that was captured by the Israelis earlier this week after fierce fighting, inflicting casualties.
“At exactly 1pm (11BST), the Islamic Resistance (Hezbollah) staged a surprise attack on Israeli tanks and emplacements on Masoud hilltop and Maroun al-Ras with various kinds of weapons, inflicting confirmed casualties,” Hezbollah said in a statement broadcast on the group’s Al Manar television station.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli army.
This morning Israeli ground forces were fighting guerrillas in Bint Jbail, but no casualties were reported.
On Wednesday, Hezbollah dealt Israel its heaviest losses in the Lebanon campaign, killing nine soldiers in fierce firefights around the town of Bint Jbail, a Hezbollah stronghold about 2.5 miles from the border.
Masoud hilltop is on the edge of Bint Jbail which has great symbolic importance for the Hezbollah guerrillas, who are Shiite Muslims. It has the largest Shiite community in the border area and was known as the “capital of the resistance” during Israel’s 1982-2000 occupation because of its vehement support for Hezbollah.
