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Israel pounds Beirut's southern suburb

Posted on: Saturday, 15 July 2006, 21:25 CDT

By Alaa Shahine

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Israel pounded Beirut's southern suburb on Sunday, the fifth successive day of an offensive on Lebanon, with no sign that its attacks on the Hizbollah guerrilla group and civilian installations were near an end.

Lebanon has repeated its demands for an immediate U.N.-backed cease-fire but the U.N. Security Council rejected the pleas after the United States objected, diplomats said.

The air strikes, which killed 35 civilians on Saturday, including 15 children, were meant to cripple Hizbollah and force Lebanon to try stopping the guerrilla group from firing rockets into Israel's northern border, where measures just short of a state of emergency have been ordered.

The bombing of Lebanese roads, bridges, ports and airports, as well as Hizbollah targets, is Israel's most destructive onslaught since a 1982 invasion to expel Palestinian forces.

The attacks started after the group's capture of two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border operation on Wednesday.

A heavy bombardment in the early hours of Sunday targeted Hizbollah's al-Manar television building, the Israeli army said.

The station's signal twice disappeared briefly before returning, and it was not immediately known if it was broadcasting from its original location.

Israeli raids have previously targeted al-Manar and have already flattened Hizbollah's headquarters.

The campaign in Lebanon coincided with an offensive Israel launched in the Gaza Strip on June 28 to try to retrieve another captured soldier and halt Palestinian rocket fire.

FARMLAND

Israeli forces clashed with militants in Gaza on Sunday as tanks moved back into the north of the Strip. Tanks and armored personnel carriers, backed by helicopters with machine guns sending down bursts of fire, moved into farmland near Beit Hanoun, an area often used by militants for launching rockets.

Militants blew up hidden bombs and fired anti-tank grenades. Palestinian witnesses said Israeli aircraft fired three missiles, wounding four people, including one 11-year-old boy.

In Beirut, Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora denounced Israel for turning his country into a "disaster zone" and appealed for foreign aid.

His speech came hours after Israel bombarded ports in Christian areas for the first time and a helicopter missile hit a lighthouse on Beirut's seafront.

The United States, which has declined to urge Israel to curb its offensive, argued in closed-door talks that the focus for Middle East diplomacy for now should be on the weekend summit in St Petersburg of the Group of Eight industrialized nations, Security Council diplomats said.

The council planned another discussion of the conflict on Monday, and hoped to begin work soon on a "substantive" response to the conflict, said French U.N. Ambassador Jean-Marc de la Sabliere, the council president for July.

Israel has said the way out would be for Lebanon to implement a U.N. resolution demanding Hizbollah be disarmed. The Beirut government, led by an anti-Syrian coalition, lacks the unity and firepower to disarm Hizbollah, the only Lebanese faction to keep its guns after the 1975-90 civil war.

Hizbollah, backed by Syria and Iran, has said it wants to swap the two captured Israeli soldiers with Lebanese and Arab prisoners in Israel's jails.

DEADLY ATTACK

An Israeli missile incinerated a van in southern Lebanon on Saturday, killing 20 people, among them 15 children, in the deadliest single attack of the campaign.

Police said the van was carrying two families fleeing the village of Marwaheen after Israeli loudspeaker warnings to leave their homes. Many of the bodies were charred.

At least 104 people, all but four of them civilians, have been killed in the five-day assault, which has choked Lebanon's economy and forced tourists and foreigners to flee.

Four Israelis, including a five-year-old child, have been killed and 300 wounded by about 700 rockets fired since Wednesday at more than 20 towns.

The Israeli government gave authorities the power to shut schools, factories and public institutions in the north in a move that falls just short of a full state of emergency.

Israel has deployed Patriot missile batteries in the northern city of Haifa to intercept rockets.

It also warned the Lebanese army on Sunday against shooting at its aircraft and said it would not hesitate to strike "at any party operating against it."

Italy began evacuating nationals from Lebanon. Britain said it was sending two Royal Navy ships to the Middle East for a possible evacuation of British citizens. Thousands of people have streamed to the Syrian border and safety.

(Additional reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza and Irwin Arieff in the U.N. bureau)

Source: REUTERS

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