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Israel hits Beirut suburb, no signs of conflict end

Posted on: Saturday, 15 July 2006, 23:26 CDT

By Alaa Shahine

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Israel pounded Beirut's southern suburb on Sunday, the fifth day of an offensive against the Hizbollah guerrilla group and civilian installations in Lebanon that shows no sign of ending soon.

Lebanon has repeated its demands for an immediate U.N.-backed ceasefire 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.

Four civilians were wounded in a raid on Beir al-Abed's area in the southern suburb, al-Manar reported. More than a dozen loud blasts were heard during the night throughout the capital.

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.

HAMAS OFFICE

Israeli forces moved back into the northern Gaza Strip on Sunday, killing at least three militants and wounding 10. The air force also targeted a Hamas office in the Islamist stronghold of Jabalya.

Israeli troops had pulled out of the northern Gaza strip a week earlier after a major raid in the territory, which Israel abandoned in 2005 after a 38-year occupation.

In Beirut, a visibly emotional 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.

"Destruction is still going on, people are still dying ... and here we are impotent," Lebanese Foreign Ministry official Nouhad Mahmoud told reporters.

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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