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IDF Naval Commandos in Tyre apartment building. (IDF photo)
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| By Israel Insider staff and partners August 5, 2006 |
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An Israeli naval commando battled with Hezbollah in the southern port city of Tyre early Saturday as a guerrilla rocket killed a soldier in clashes on the border and Israeli raids left at least eight people dead in multiple strikes across the country.
In eastern Lebanon, Hezbollah mortars hit two vehicles of an Israeli engineering corps during a sweep of a village in the Taibeh area, killing Or. Shachar, 20, of Kibbutz Yad Mordechai, and wounding nine others during heavy fighting, the Israeli army said.
After days of desultory diplomacy, Washington has said it was near agreement with France on a U.N. cease-fire resolution, possibly by early next week. But no cessation of fighting was in sight Saturday.
Given the determination of both Hezbollah and Israel to look victorious when the conflict finally ends, the worst of the fighting may still lay ahead with the militant Shiite guerrilla fighters perhaps making good on its threat to rocket the main Israeli metropolis of Tel Aviv and Israel launching an all-out ground offensive, pushing northward to the Litani River about 20 miles (30 kilometers) from the border.
In Tyre, Hezbollah said its guerrillas repelled the Israeli commando and killed a member of the force. Israeli defense officials said eight soldiers were wounded during the fight, in the first confirmation that a naval commando had raided the coastal city. Two of the wounded were in serious condition, they said.
Israel's raid on the Lebanese coastal city of Tyre on Saturday was intended to destroy a key Hezbollah unit firing long-range rockets into Israel and to kill its commanders, and was "very successful," a senior Israeli naval officer said.
The officer said the operation was meant to send the message to the Lebanese-based Shiite militia that it can reach any of its leaders "wherever he is."
The officer, who cannot be identified by name under briefing regulations, said the naval commandoes hit two or three targeted commanders in close-quarters combat in a second-floor apartment, and six or seven others when returning fire as they were withdrawing from the building.
Two Israelis were seriously wounded in the early part of the operation and six more suffered light injuries, as they extracted the wounded.
The complex mission was planned to pinpoint the men launching rockets into northern Israel while causing minimal civilian casualties, he said. "It wasn't simple."
He said the commandoes had to fight in a heavily built-up urban area "full of terrorists," but called it "a very successful mission."
The officer said, however, the threat of rockets to Israel's main population centers was not eliminated, since other Hezbollah units also had long-range capability.
"It was another step in an ongoing operation," he said.
A Lebanese soldier and a civilian were also killed in the clash, local officials in Tyre said.
Lebanese military officials said the Israeli commando landed near an orange grove, cut a hole through a barbed wire fence and targeted the second floor of an apartment building.
The commando was repelled by Hezbollah guerrillas and Lebanese soldiers who heavily clashed with the forces, the Shiite militia said.
A resident said he saw the commando force attack the building. "They all had beards. I thought maybe they were Hezbollah," said 18-year-old Qassem Aad, who lives nearby.
Aad said he saw several people walk out of the building with their hands up, and that shooting then erupted. "I saw a man screaming, he was shot."
Aad said he later inspected the building that was attacked and saw blood on the stairs. He said the targeted apartment was charred, walls blackened.
Local ambulance rescuers said six people were killed, including two from Hezbollah and one soldier from the Lebanese army who was at a nearby checkpoint and was shot at.
A Lebanese army officer confirmed one Lebanese soldier had died and said four people in the targeted apartment were killed.
The officer confirmed that a missile fired from an Israeli drone killed two people who were riding a motorcycle near al-Bass, on the outskirts of Tyre.
Meanwhile, loud explosions resounded in Beirut as Israeli warplanes renewed their strikes on Hezbollah strongholds in the city's southern suburbs.
A gutted van with the charred body of the driver was also found Saturday morning near Qaa in eastern Lebanon, the town's mayor, Saadeh Toum, said.
Travelers have been taking dirt roads to travel from one place to another because of bombardment of the main roads in the region.
While meeting fierce resistance on the ground in south Lebanon, the Israeli army said it had taken up positions in or near 11 towns and villages as part its effort to carve out a 9 kilometer (5-mile) Hezbollah-free zone.
"We plan to carry out the whole mission," Defense Minister Amir Peretz said. "Hezbollah must not have illusions that we plan to give in. (Hezbollah leader Hassan) Nasrallah shouldn't doubt that he faces a force that insists on completing its mission."
As of Friday the Associated Press count showed at least 567 Lebanese have been killed, including 489 civilians confirmed dead by the Health Ministry, 28 Lebanese soldiers and at least 50 Hezbollah guerrillas.
Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora said that 1 million people -- or about a quarter of Lebanon's population -- has fled the fighting. Others estimate some 800,000 Lebanese have been made refugee.
The Lebanese government's Higher Relief Council said 907 Lebanese had been killed in the conflict.
Since the fighting started, 75 Israelis have been killed, 45 soldiers and 30 civilians. More than 300,000 Israelis have fled their homes in the north, Israeli officials said.
The State Department said on Friday that the United States and France were nearing completion of a U.N. resolution designed to halt the fighting in Lebanon and to set out principles for a lasting cease-fire.
"We are very close to a final draft with the French on a text," the department's spokesman Sean McCormack said Friday.
The AP contributed to this report.
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