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| By Israel Insider staff and partners July 19, 2006 |
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In a dramatic indication of Israeli military plans, the IDF has advised the nearly 300,000 residents of south Lebanon to evacuate north of the Litani river, a distance of some 40 km (25 miles), and indication of a likely military incursion to that line. The order came after a deadly day in which two Israeli soldiers were killed in an ambush at a Hezbollah stronghold just over the border. Nine soldiers were wounded.
Israeli troops clashed with Hezbollah guerrillas on the Lebanese side of the border and warplanes flattened buildings Wednesday, while rockets and fighting killed four Israelis. Lebanon's prime minister said 300 people had been killed in his country as fighting entered its second week.
With the U.S. signaling it will not push the Israelis toward a fast cease-fire, the civilian bloodshed was rising. Nearly a hundred rockets were fired by Hezbollah toward Israel. A rocket killed two Israeli brothers, aged 3 and 7, in Nazereth, a mostly Arab town revered as the place where Jesus grew up. Other Israelis were wounded all over the northern region.
Residents in southern Lebanese villages were digging for bodies trapped under the rubble of homes crushed in airstrikes.
A luxury cruise liner, meanwhile, evacuated more than 1,000 Americans from Lebanon, the first large pullout by the United States since Israel began its onslaught on July 12, with many grumbling about delays in getting them out. Europeans and Lebanese with foreign passports already have fled by the thousands.
Two Chinook transport helicopters also took 120 Americans to Larnaca in Cyprus and were to make at least one more trip later Wednesday.
Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora put the death toll so far in Lebanon at 300 dead, 1,000 wounded and half a million driven from their homes. Speaking at a gathering of foreign ambassadors, he chided those such as the United States who said Israel was acting in self defense.
"Is this what the international community calls the right of self defense? Is this the price to pay?" he told the gathering, which included the U.S. ambassador. He called for a cease-fire and vowed to seek compensation from Israel for "unimaginable" damage to infrastructure.
On the Israeli side, 29 people have been killed, including 14 soldiers and 15 civilians.
With Hezbollah fighters still at the border after days of bombardment, Israel was trying to pound sources of rocket fire. Bombers, which had been focusing on Hezbollah strongholds in southern Beirut, hit a Christian suburb on the eastern side of the capital for the first time _ targeting a truck carring a machine used to drill for water that could have been mistaken for a missile launcher. The vehicle was destroyed, but nobody was hurt in that attack.
Israeli troops crossed the border before dawn to look for tunnels and weapons, and clashed with Hezbollah guerrillas near the coastal border town of Naqoura. The Israeli army said two soldiers had been killed and nine wounded, while Hezbollah said one guerrilla was killed.
Israel, which has mainly limited itself to attacks from the air and sea, had been reluctant to send in ground troops because Hezbollah is far more familiar with the terrain and because of memories of Israel's ill-fated 18-year occupation of south Lebanon that ended in 2000.
Israel declared Tuesday it was ready to fight Hezbollah guerrillas for several more weeks, raising doubts about international efforts to broker an immediate cease-fire.
The international Red Cross along with the U.N. children's and health agencies said they were seriously concerned about civilian casualties and new health risks because of the escalating violence.
Israel said its airstrikes had destroyed "about 50 percent" of Hezbollah's arsenal. "It will take us time to destroy what is left," Brig. Gen. Alon Friedman, a senior army commander, told Israeli Army Radio.
Separately, Israeli forces killed six Palestinians after tanks moved into the Mughazi refugee camp in central Gaza under cover of machine gun fire, the latest incursion in its three-week military push in the seaside territory.
In an army operation in the West Bank city of Nablus, at least three Palestinians were killed when the army surrounded a prison where wanted militants were apparently hiding, Palestinian officials said.
Israel began a large-scale operation in Gaza on June 28, three days after Hamas-lined militants tunneled under the border and attacked an Israeli army base at a Gaza crossing, killing two soldiers and capturing a third.
The fighting in Lebanon dealt a blow to diplomatic efforts to broker a cease-fire and to send a new international force to bolster the 2,000-member U.N. force in the south.
The Bush administration also has refused to yield to international calls to press Israel for a prompt end to it campaign against the Hezbollah militia.
Instead, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is trying to drum up support for what she called a cease-fire of "lasting value." That is, one that would have the Lebanese army take over the south of the country where Hezbollah guerrillas have conducted a cross-border war against Israel for years.
Rice is likely to make a trip to the area this weekend, but no announcement has been made. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack would only say Wednesday that her trip would come "in the near future" and told CNN the timing would depend upon "when she thinks it's most useful and most effective."
British Prime Minister Tony Blair also rejected calls for Israel to declare a unilateral cease-fire, insisting that Hezbollah must first free two captured Israeli soldiers and stop firing rockets at the Jewish state.
"This would stop now if the soldiers who were kidnapped wrongly ... were released," he said. "It would stop if the rockets stopped coming into Haifa, deliberately to kill innocent civilians."
U.S. President George W. Bush turned his attention to Syria, one of Hezbollah's backers, saying he suspects it was trying to reassert influence in Lebanon more than a year after withdrawing its troops under U.N. pressure.
"It's in our interest for Syria to stay out of Lebanon and for this government to survive," Bush said, referring to Saniora's fragile government.
"Syria's trying to get back into Lebanon, it looks like, seems to me," he said. "The world must deal with Hezbollah, with Syria and to continue to isolate Iran."
Israel stressed it did not plan to target Hezbollah's main sponsors, Iran and Syria, during the current fighting.
"We will leave Iran to the world community, and Syria as well," Vice Premier Shimon Peres told Army Radio. "It's very important to understand that we are not instilling world order."
The International Committee of the Red Cross said it was "extremely concerned about the grave consequences that military action is still having on the civilian population," and it reminded both parties to the conflict of their obligation to distinguish between civilians and military personnel and targets.
UNICEF and the World Health Organization also warned of a serious psychological effect from the fighting and said movement of medical supplies and ambulances to affected areas was seriously limited.
In the village of Srifa, near Tyre in southern Lebanon, the airstrikes flattened 15 houses. The village's headman, Hussein Kamaledine, said 25 to 30 people lived in the houses, but it was not known if they were at home at the time. Many people have fled southern Lebanon.
"This is a real massacre," Kamaledine told Hezbollah's Al-Manar TV as fire engines extinguished the blaze and rescue workers searched for survivors.
High casualties also were feared in the nearby town of Salaa and the Hezbollah stronghold of Baalbek in eastern Lebanon, where more houses were devastated.
In other attacks reported Wednesday:
_ Five people, most from one family, were killed when a missile struck a neighborhood in the southern Lebanese town of Nabatiyeh, police and hospital officials said. The target was a commercial office of a firm belonging to Hezbollah, but those killed were residents.
_ One person was killed and two wounded in the southern village of Ghaziyeh when a missile struck a building that housed a Hezbollah-affiliated social institution.
- A carpenter was killed and five people wounded when a missile hit near a wood mill in the Bekaa Valley village of Loussi.
- Five people were killed when a missile hit a pick-up truck on a road near the Bekaa Valley town of Maaraboun.
- One person was killed at a road junctions outside the town of Hadath near Beirut.
- Planes also hit Beirut's southern suburbs, a Hezbollah stronghold, causing a series of explosions that reverberated across the city before dawn Wednesday.
- An Israeli Apache helicopter fired a missile on a car parked in front of a house on a hill east of the town of Marjayoun, killing two people.
The AP contributed to this report.
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