Associated Press
U.N. Post Hit in Israel-Hezbollah Fighting
By SAM F. GHATTAS , 07.21.2006, 09:10 AM
A U.N.-run observation post near the border was struck during fighting between Israel and Hezbollah militants on Friday, while Israel pushed ahead with airstrikes on Lebanon and warned people in the south to flee as it prepared for a likely ground invasion to set up a deep buffer zone.
The Israeli army said Hezbollah rockets hit the U.N. post near Zarit, just inside Israel, but a U.N. officer said it was an artillery shell fired by the Israeli Defense Force. The facility was severely damaged, but nobody was injured as the Ghanian troops manning the post were inside bomb shelters at the time of the strike, the U.N. official said.
Also Friday, more rockets were fired at the port city of Haifa, the first time in nearly 24 hours that Israel's third-largest city has been struck. Rescue officials initially said that 10 people were injured seriously but later lowered that figure to just three. Another 16 suffered from shock.
For a 10th day, Israeli warplanes battered south Lebanon, particularly a border region where Israeli soldiers and guerrillas fought pitched battles the evening before, followed by smaller clashes Friday.
A house in the nearby village of Aitaroun was flattened, with 10 people believed inside, but rescue workers could not reach it because of artillery shelling, security officials said.
Strikes also hit Lebanon's main road link to Syria with missiles, collapsing part of a 1.6 mile-long suspension bridge - Lebanon's longest - through the mountains. Strikes on the road near the Syrian border set on fire empty passenger buses returning from Damascus, and the drivers escaped, police said.
Two Apache attack helicopters collided in an accident northern Israel near the Lebanon border early Friday, killing one air force officer and injuring three others, two seriously, Israeli officials said. Al-Jazeera reported that four soldiers were killed in the crash, but did not give a source. The commander of Israel's air force appointed an inquiry team to determine the cause.
At least 335 people have been killed in Lebanon in the Israeli campaign, Health Minister Mohammed Jawad Khalife said at midday_ a rise of 29 over the past 24 hours.Thirty-four Israelis also have been killed, including the air force officer killed Friday and 18 soldiers.
Israel appears to have decided that a large-scale incursion across the border was the only way to push Hezbollah back after 10 days of the heaviest bombardment of Lebanon in 24 years failed to do so. But mounting civilian casualties and the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Lebanese could limit the amount of time Israel has to achieve its goals, as international tolerance for the bloodshed and destruction runs out.
Top Israeli officials met Thursday night to decide how big a force to send in, according to senior military officials. They said Israel won't stop its offensive until Hezbollah is forced behind the Litani River, 20 miles north of the border.
French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy, meanwhile, said his country was dispatching urgent aid to Lebanon by air and sea and he called for safe passage.
His comments came a day after U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan warned of a humanitarian crisis in Lebanon and called for an immediate cease-fire, even as he admitted "serious obstacles" stand in the way of even easing the violence.
"We are setting up a humanitarian air and sea port," Douste-Blazy told reporters during a visit to Beirut. "At the same time we demand the establishment of humanitarian corridors."
Israel has stepped up its small-scale forays over the border in recent days, seeking Hezbollah positions, rocket stores and bunkers. Each time it has faced tough resistance from the guerrillas. Hezbollah announced that three of its fighters were killed in fighting Friday, bringing to six the number of guerrillas known to have been killed since Israel launched a massive military campaign against Lebanon after the militant Shiite Muslim group captured two of its soldiers on July 12.
An Israeli military radio station that broadcasts into southern Lebanon warned residents of 12 border villages to leave the area before 2 p.m. Friday. It was the latest in a series of recent warnings from the Al-Mashriq station, which has said Israeli forces would "act immediately" to halt Hezbollah rocket fire.
Heavy black smoke billowed as Israeli warplanes struck the ancient city of Baalbek in the eastern Bekaa Valley - a major Hezbollah stronghold.
A large building at the entrance to Baalbak was demolished and residential areas in the city were hit, killing two people and injuring 19, security officials said. Strikes in south Beirut killed one person, and missiles that hit a village near the border with Israel, Aita al-Shaab, killed three, the officials said.
The U.N. official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation, said an artillery shell fired by the Israeli Defense Force "impacted a direct hit on the U.N. position overlooking Zarit."
An Israeli Defense Force spokesman said the position was hit by rockets fired by Hezbollah guerrillas at northern Israel. The differing accounts could not immediately be reconciled.
In 1996, during an Israeli air and artillery offensive against Lebanon, artillery blasted a U.N. base at Qana in southern Lebanon, killing more than 100 Lebanese civilians who had taken refuge with the peacekeepers.
The U.N. mission has nearly 2,000 peacekeepers and more than 300 civilians in southern Lebanon but the force has proven ineffective in policing the so-call Blue Line separating Israel and Lebanon in the six years since Israel pulled its troops out of the zone.
While Annan denounced Israel for "excessive use of force" and Hezbollah for holding "an entire nation hostage," the United States has resisted calls to press ally Israel to stop its offensive. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was expected to make her first foray to the region since the fighting began next week. Israeli officials said she was expected there no later than midweek.
Ships lined up at Beirut's port as a massive evacuation effort to pull out Americans and other foreigners desperate to flee the fighting picked up speed. U.S. officials said more than 8,000 of the roughly 25,000 Americans who live or work in Lebanon will be evacuated by the weekend.
Lebanese, meanwhile, streamed north into the capital and other regions, crowding into schools, relatives' homes or hotels. Taxi drivers in the south were charging up to US$400 per person for rides to Beirut - more than 40 times the usual price. In remote villages of the south, cut off by strikes, residents made their way out over the mountains by foot.
The price of food, medical supplies and gasoline rose by as much as 500 percent in parts of Lebanon on Thursday as Israel's relentless bombardment destroyed roads, bridges and other supply routes. The World Food Program said estimates of basic food supplies ranged from one to three months.
Neither side showed any sign of backing down.
Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah shrugged off concerns of a stepped-up Israeli onslaught, vowing never to release two Israeli soldiers captured by his guerrillas even "if the whole universe comes (against us)." He said they would be freed only as part of a prisoner exchange brokered through indirect negotiations.
He spoke in an interview with the Al-Jazeera news network taped Thursday to show he had survived a heavy airstrike in south Beirut that Israel said targeted a Hezbollah underground leadership bunker. The guerrillas said the strike only hit a mosque under construction and no one was hurt.
The U.N. estimated that about a half-million people have been displaced in Lebanon, with 130,000 fleeing to Syria and about 45,000 believed to be in need of assistance.
More than 400,000 people - perhaps as high as half a million - are believed to live south of the Litani, according to Timur Goskel, the former top U.N. adviser in the south.
The river has twice has been the border line for Israeli buffer zones. In 1978, Israel invaded up to the Litani to drive back Palestinian guerrillas, withdrawing from most of the south months later.
Israel invaded Lebanon again in a much bigger operation in June 1982 when its forces seized parts of Beirut. It eventually carved out a buffer zone that stopped at the Litani. That zone was reduced gradually but the Israeli presence lasted for 18 years until 2000, when it withdrew its troops completely from the country.
Copyright 2006 Associated Press. All rights reserved.
