 |
 |
 |
|
|
Israeli troops in Lebanon (AP)
|
|
|
|
|
|
| By Associated Press August 13, 2006 |
|
| |
Nine Israel Defense Forces soldiers were killed in southern Lebanon on Sunday, as troops and Hezbollah guerillas engaged in heavy fighting before a UN cease-fire resolution was expected to go into effect. The IDF said two of the dead were captains.
The soldiers, First Sgt. Major Amitai Yaron, 44, from Zichron Ya'akov and St.-Sgt. Peter Ohatosky, 23, from Lod, were killed after an anti-tank rocket was fired at their infantry unit operating near the village of Kantara in the eastern sector of southern Lebanon. Another soldier sustained moderate wounds and nine were lightly injured in the incident.
Lt. (Res.) Eliel Ben Yehuda, 24, from Kfar Tavor, Sgt. -Maj. (Res.) Guy Hasson, 24, from Noami and Lt. (Res.) Tzur Zarahi, 26, from Nahalal were also killed in Sunday's clashes.
The IDF said it thwarted a major Hezbollah attack on Sunday when it shot down two Iranian-made drones laden with explosives heading toward Israel. One of the drones was shot down over Kibbutz Cabri, in the Western Galilee. The other drone was downed over the southern Lebanese port city of Tyre.
Israeli warplanes pounded south Beirut with at least 23 missiles, most of them slamming into a Hezbollah stronghold in a two-minute period Sunday within minutes of the Israeli government's approval a U.N. cease-fire plan that was to go into effect at 7am local Monday.
The missiles slammed into the hard-hit Dahiyeh suburb, a Hezbollah stronghold, where a second salvo of three rockets hit about 90 minutes after the Lebanese Cabinet announced postponing a crucial meeting that was to have taken up implementation of the U.N. cease-fire plan, including the promised dispatch of 15,000 Lebanese soldiers to the south of the country. Later in the night, several rockets hit the area, security officials said.
Israeli warplanes around 10:20 p.m. carried several air raids on Dahiyeh, shortly after dropping leaflets asking residents to leave seven of its neighborhoods "immediately," security officials said.
At around 9:30 p.m., an Israeli drone fired two missiles at two trucks parked inside a food factory in the Mount Lebanon town of Chouaifat, which is a few kilometers from Dahiyeh, police said. No one was hurt in the raid, police said.
The Lebanese force was to eventually be joined by an equal number of U.N. peacekeeping troops to police south Lebanon as Israel withdrew. The Cabinet cancellation was sure to delay the process.
The meeting was believed to have been postponed in a dispute over sections of the cease-fire plan that demanded the disarmament of Hezbollah fighters south of the Litani River that was to be taken over by the Lebanese-U.N. peacekeeping force.
As explosions reverberated across the Lebanese capital, and there were reports of other strikes south of the city on the Christian town of Damour and a nearby village, Naameh.
Television reports from south Beirut said the strikes destroyed a complex of eight residential buildings and at least six families were thought to have been in them at the time of the attack.
Television pictures panned across massive damage that appeared to stretch for several hundred meters (yards) in all directions.
Fires were burning and rescuers were arriving to check for survivors, although the scope of the damage made it appear unlikely that anyone in the area lived through the airstrikes.
Hezbollah's Al-Manar television issued a statement declaring none of the militant group's leadership was in the area at the time of the attack. A later statement said one fighter had been killed in combat with Israeli forces in the south but gave no date.
Earlier, warplanes fired missiles into several gasoline stations in the southern port city of Tyre and killed at least 15 people in those and other attacks as Israeli jets ranged across the skies above Lebanon from north to south in the final day before a cease-fire was to take hold.
Fierce ground fighting continued in the south, where Israel lost 24 soldiers Saturday, including five on a helicopter shot out of the air by guerrilla fighters.
Israeli missiles rained down as its Cabinet debated then approved a U.N. cease-fire resolution that Secretary-General Kofi Annan said would become effective at 8 a.m. Monday. The Lebanese government approved the truce Saturday night, shortly after Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah said his fighters would abide by the agreement but would not stop fighting until all Israeli troops withdrew.
Also Sunday, Syria backed the Lebanese government's decision in approving the resolution but said there were reservations on some issues, the official news agency, SANA, reported. The agency, quoting an "official source," said that until Israeli troops withdraw from Lebanon, the "April 1996 Understanding" that calls for avoiding attacks on civilians but approves "resistance" against Israeli occupation, should be implemented.
Statements on both sides of the border portend no quick end to the bloody conflict despite the U.N.-demanded cease-fire. The U.N. document calls for Israel to withdraw in conjunction with the insertion of a strengthened U.N. peacekeeping force of about 15,000 troops and an equal number of soldiers from the Lebanese army. That could take days, perhaps weeks.
Israeli planes attacked villages near Nabatiyeh north of the Litani River nonstop Sunday, killing three men who had survived an airstrike on his car a day earlier.
Huge fires could be seen near the al-Bass Palestinian refugee camp north of Tyre and near the Najem hospital in the city after the filling stations were hit. There were no immediate reports of casualties in the intense series of strikes that began about 11:30 a.m.
Attacks near Lebanese army bases in the east of Tyre killed at least four people, including two soldiers.
The other two soldiers were killed when an Israeli jet hit their military vehicle as it drove on a road in the western Bekaa Valley, a senior military official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to reporters.
Jets returned to the village about noon and destroyed two more houses near the Lebanese army post on the road leading to Bourj el-Chemali.
In the Bekaa Valley, security officials reported two people killed and four wounded in an airstrike on Shaath, north of the Hezbollah stronghold of Baalbek.
Warplanes also destroyed a bridge near the northern town of Halba in the remote Akkar region bordering Syria, wounding two people, local television and security officials reported. Jets also raided the area of Ali Nahri in the eastern Bekaa Valley near the border with Syria.
Israeli gunners also shelled several positions along the Litani River, according to security officials. Israeli forces reached the river's south bank near the town of Aalmane Saturday night as Israel flooded the south of the country with troops and armor and inserted commando units near the Litani by helicopter.
Israeli appears to be trying to trap Hezbollah fighters between forces landed near the Litani and the larger force moving in on the ground from the border. Israel has said its warplanes are attacking guerrilla targets and roads in an effort to choke off Hezbollah's supply lines.
At least 19 Lebanese were killed in Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon on Saturday, while the Israeli army lost at least 24 soldiers in heavy ground fighting in the thrust northward. Five soldiers were killed after Hezbollah shot down an Israeli helicopter, the Israeli army said.
Hezbollah's al-Manar TV said guerrillas were clashing with an Israeli force trying to retrieve the bodies of those killed when the helicopter downed by an anti-tank missile. Two soldiers died when accidentally crushed by a tank.
Israel claimed it killed more than 50 Hezbollah fighters Saturday.
Al-Manar television said an Israeli bulldozer and two tanks were hit along the Litani early Sunday. The Israeli military had no immediately comment.
|
|
 
|
|
|
|
Click on the blue headline to read a Talkback comment and respond to it. Click on the  icon to send a private email to the talkback writer. The icon appears only if the writer has decided to be contacted. If no popup window appears, please make sure your popup blocker allows israelinsider.com.
|
|
| |
|
|
