Israeli commandos clash with Hezbollah

The increased fighting came as diplomatic efforts faltered.

France said it will not participate in a meeting at the UN tomorrow that could send troops to help monitor a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah, even though it may join, and possibly even lead, such a force.

France said it does not want to talk about sending peacekeepers until fighting halts and the UN Security Council agrees to a wider framework for lasting peace.

Israeli military officials said their troops were going from village to village clearing them of Hezbollah guerrillas.

Hezbollah was putting up resistance, but the officials said they were confident it would not change their timetable of reaching a site four miles into Lebanon by tomorrow.

They said they could easily dash inland to the Litani River, their final objective, but that they were proceeding methodically so as not to leave pockets of resistance behind.

In Baalbek, on the border with Syria, two gutted cars and a minivan with shattered windows, riddled with shrapnel and bullet holes, sat outside an abandoned hospital that was the scene of fierce fighting in the early-morning hours.

In the nearby village of Al Jamaliyeh, where airstrikes killed seven including the mayor’s son and brother, about 50 people carried pictures of Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah during a small procession.

Bodies of the dead were hastily shrouded in white cloth and carried to the graveyard.

Israeli commandos flew in by helicopter in the raid on Baalbek, capturing five Hezbollah guerrillas and killing at least 10, said Israel’s army chief, Lieutenant General Dan Halutz.

Though Israel has not yet released the identity of those captured, when asked whether any were “big fish”, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said: “They are tasty fishes.”

A Hezbollah spokesman confirmed Israeli troops captured “four or five” people, but said it was not at the hospital.

He denied they were Hezbollah fighters, saying one was a 60-year-old grocery store owner, and two others, the grocer’s relatives, work in construction.

Witnesses said Israeli forces partially destroyed the Dar al-Hikma hospital in Baalbek, where chief Hezbollah spokesman Hussein Rahal said fierce fighting raged for more than an hour.

Hezbollah used automatic rifles and rocket-propelled grenades and fought the commandos inside the Dar al-Hikma hospital, while Israeli jets attacked the surrounding guerrilla force with missiles, Rahal said.

Olmert said though the scene of the fighting is called a hospital, “there are no patients there and there is no hospital. This is a base of the Hezbollah in disguise.”

The hospital, which residents said is financed by an Iranian charity that is close to Hezbollah, was empty of patients at the time of the raid, the guerrilla group said.

“It was empty last night. There was no one there,” said the spokesman.

One of a series of air raids struck Al Jamaliyeh, about a mile from the hospital, hitting the house of the village’s mayor, Hussein Jamaleddin, instantly killing his son, brother, and five other relatives.

A family of seven, a mother, father and their five children, were killed in another air raid on an area near Al Jamaliyeh, witnesses said. A van driver was also killed when another missile struck nearby.

Fighting ended at about 4am local time (2am Irish time) as precarious calm prevailed in Baalbek, residents said.

Hezbollah guerrillas hit back, firing 160 rockets by mid-afternoon at towns across northern Israel, wounding at least 21 people and killing one, Israeli police said.

An Associated Press reporter standing on a hilltop overlooking the Lebanese border town of Kfar Kila, just over a mile from Israel, saw dozens of outgoing rockets fly overhead and across the Israeli border. Israeli artillery was returning fire, with a shell falling about every two minutes.

Israel medics said one of the rockets hit near the town of Beit Shean, the deepest rocket strike into Israel so far.

Witnesses in Israel also reported that a Hezbollah rocket hit the West Bank for the first time, striking between the villages of Fakua and Jalboun, near Beit Shean.

Hezbollah said they landed a Khaibar-1 rocket near Beit Shean and Israel, which claims the rocket is Iranian-made, confirmed the hit.

Beit Shean is about 42 miles south of the Lebanese border.

A 52-year-old Israeli man riding his bike near the Israeli border town of Nahariya was killed by a rocket, medics said.

In an attack on the Lebanese army, Israeli jets fired at least one missile on a base in the village of Sarba, in the Iqlim al Tuffah province, a highland region where Hezbollah is also believed to have offices and bases.

One soldier was killed, bringing to 26 the number of Lebanese soldiers killed since the start of the Israeli offensive against Lebanon on July 12.

The Lebanese military has largely stayed out of the three-week-old conflict, though has said it will fight if Israel launches a wide-scale invasion, and Israeli warplanes have repeatedly attacked soldiers.

It was not clear what prompted the airstrike on the army base.

In an incident denied by the Israeli military, Hezbollah said in a statement that it had attacked an Israeli army armoured unit that crossed into Lebanon this morning, destroying two tanks and leaving their crews dead or wounded.

The Israelis want to keep Hezbollah off the border so their patrols and civilians along the fence are not in danger of attack, such as the July 12 raid in which guerrillas killed three soldiers and seized two others.

The army also hopes to push Hezbollah far enough north so that most of the guerrillas’ rockets cannot reach the Jewish state.

Israeli officials have said their soldiers were to go as far as the Litani, about 18 miles from the border, and hold the ground until an international peacekeeping force comes ashore.

In Geneva, the UN’s World Food Programme said Israel had agreed to permit two oil tankers to sail into Lebanon to ease a growing fuel crisis in the country.

At least 540 Lebanese have been killed, including 468 civilians and 26 Lebanese soldiers and at least 46 Hezbollah guerrillas.

The health minister says the toll could be as high as 750, including those still buried in rubble or missing. Fifty-five Israelis have died: 36 soldiers as well as 19 civilians killed in Hezbollah rocket attacks.

The United Nations also warned that the longer a spill of 110,000 barrels of oil is not cleaned up from Lebanon’s coast, the more severe the environmental impact will be. The oil was spilled two weeks ago after Israeli warplanes hit a coastal power plant.