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Israeli reprisals hit Lebanon

Posted on: Thursday, 13 July 2006, 06:37 CDT

By Nadim Ladki

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Israel struck Beirut airport and blockaded Lebanese ports on Thursday, expanding reprisals that have killed 52 civilians in Lebanon since Hizbollah captured two Israeli soldiers and killed eight a day earlier.

The Lebanese Shiite group retaliated by raining rockets onto northern Israel. A woman was killed and 29 people were wounded, including children, in Nahariya, Israeli medics said.

The violence was the worst between Israel and Lebanon since 1996 when Israeli troops still occupied part of the south. It coincided with a major Israeli offensive into the Gaza Strip to retrieve a captured soldier and halt Palestinian rocket fire.

Despite the flare-up in Lebanon, Israel signaled no let-up in its Gaza assault, mounting an air strike that destroyed the office of Palestinian Foreign Minister Mahmoud al-Zahar. At least 24 Palestinians were killed in Gaza on Wednesday.

Israeli aircraft bombed runways at Beirut's international airport, forcing flights to divert to Cyprus.

An Israeli military spokesman announced a naval blockade of Lebanese ports, saying they were used to transfer "terrorists and weapons to the terror organizations operating in Lebanon."

Israeli naval vessels were visible from the shore. A Beirut port official said ships had docked early in the day, but that the Israelis had prevented some empty ones from leaving.

AIR RAIDS

Sustained air strikes in south Lebanon killed at least 50 civilians, including more than 15 children, and wounded 100 people, security sources said. Ten members of a family were killed in Dweir village and seven family members died in Baflay.

A Lebanese army soldier was also killed. Israeli air strikes on Wednesday killed two civilians and a Hizbollah fighter. Two dozen bridges have been hit, with most heavily damaged.

The United States gave little sign it would rein in Israel's punishment of Lebanon. "We are urging restraint on both sides, recognizing Israel's right to defend itself," said a U.S. official, who asked not to be named.

The official reiterated U.S. accusations that Hizbollah's backers in Syria and Iran were partly to blame for its actions.

France criticized Israel's campaign, including the Beirut airport attack, as "a disproportionate act of war." Russia condemned Israel's actions in Lebanon and Gaza in similar terms.

Arab foreign ministers will meet in Cairo on Saturday to discuss Israeli attacks on Lebanon and the Palestinian territories, the Arab League said.

Hizbollah, which said it seized the Israeli soldiers to win freedom for Arab prisoners in Israel, said it had fired 60 rockets at Nahariya "in response to the massacres of civilians in the south and assaults on infrastructure."

The violence rattled financial markets in Israel and Lebanon with investors worried that it might worsen, or spread to Syria.

The Israeli shekel lost as much as two percent against the dollar and shares lost four percent in early trade.

The Lebanese pound came under pressure. Beirut stocks slumped in panic selling, with Lebanon's biggest company Solidere shedding 15 percent, the maximum permitted.

Two hours after the airport raid, an Israeli helicopter fired a missile at the headquarters of Hizbollah's al-Manar TV in the Beirut suburb of Haret Hreik, wounding six people.

Israeli aircraft attacked an al-Manar relay tower in eastern Lebanon, killing one person and wounding four, witnesses said.

Israel had promised a "very painful" response after Hizbollah seized two soldiers and killed eight on Wednesday.

DOMESTIC PRESSURE

The Israeli assault will increase domestic pressure on Hizbollah, which has refused to disarm in line with a 2004 U.N. resolution, and add to international calls on the Lebanese government, led by an anti-Syrian coalition, to act.

Michael Karam, editor of a Lebanese business magazine, said Hizbollah's actions were ill-considered. "Now we've got no airport, so no tourism and no prosperity," he added.

The Hizbollah attack, which Israel blames on Lebanon, tore up tacit understandings that had limited border violence for six years since Israeli troops left the south.

Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora has said his government did not endorse the Hizbollah operation.

(Additional reporting by Alaa Shahine, Lin Noueihed and Laila Bassam, and Jerusalem bureau)

Source: REUTERS

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