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Israel hits Lebanon, U.N. plans stability force

Posted on: Monday, 17 July 2006, 07:59 CDT

By Lin Noueihed

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Israel bombarded Lebanon for a sixth day on Monday and dismissed as premature a proposal for an international stability force to help end the worst fighting across the Israeli-Lebanese border in more than 20 years.

Israeli warplanes hit coastal targets in the north and south, struck Beirut and damaged homes in the east belonging to members of the Hizbollah guerrilla group, which fired more rockets deep into the Jewish state.

An Israeli army spokesman also said some soldiers had crossed the border overnight to destroy Hizbollah positions but denied Israel had ground troops inside southern Lebanon.

"There was a very small incursion overnight to destroy a few Hizbollah positions. ... That has been done," he said.

Lebanese televisions stations showed burning debris falling over Beirut and said an Israeli plane had been shot down. Israel's Defense Minister Amir Peretz said no jet or helicopter had been lost but an unmanned drone may have been downed.

The fighting, the worst since Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982, was triggered when Hizbollah, which is backed by Syria and Iran and is part of the Lebanese government, seized two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid on northern Israel last week.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Security Council members would start hammering out a detailed agreement on deploying a multilateral security force to south Lebanon.

But Israel said it was too soon to talk of sending the force. "We're at the stage where we want to be sure that Hizbollah is not deployed at our northern border," government spokeswoman Miri Eisin said.

Army Radio quoted Israel's chief of staff as saying Israel planned to enforce a 1 km (0.5 mile) "security zone" to keep Hizbollah away from the border.

Hizbollah is seeking the release of Lebanese and Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. It has not commented on international efforts to halt the fighting.

Echoing a muted call from the Group of Eight powers, the European Union urged all sides to rein in violence, but stopped short of demanding an immediate ceasefire.

Israel's campaign has killed 179 people, all but 13 of them civilians, and wounded more than 500. It has also destroyed much of Lebanon's civilian infrastructure.

Twenty-four Israelis have been killed in the fighting, including 12 civilians hit in rocket attacks.

ISRAELI STRIKES

Israeli raids on Monday destroyed two army posts on the northern Lebanese coast, killing at least six Lebanese soldiers, and damaged the homes of Hizbollah officials in eastern Lebanon, killing 11 people in more than 60 strikes.

Seven more people died in strikes south of Beirut, including one on a coastal road linking it to the port city of Sidon.

Several thunderous blasts echoed over the capital and black smoke rose from a blazing fuel storage depot in the Christian suburb of Dora. Civilian installations, petrol stations and factories elsewhere were also hit, security sources said.

Beirut's stock market remained closed after falling 14 percent last week.

Israel is demanding the disarming of Hizbollah in line with U.N. Security Council resolutions -- a task that is beyond a fragile Lebanese government.

Lebanon, just emerging from three decades of Syrian tutelage, fears that any attempt to tackle Hizbollah directly would re-ignite civil war and split its army.

Hizbollah launched rocket attacks on Haifa on Sunday, killing eight people in its deadliest strike on Israel and prompting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to warn of far-reaching consequences for Lebanon.

Hizbollah said it fired dozens more rockets at Haifa on Monday. A three-storey building in the city collapsed, wounding two people, medics said.

France, the United States, Britain and a host of other nations scrambled to evacuate their citizens from Lebanon.

Thousands of foreigners have fled overland to Syria since Thursday, despite Israeli air strikes on main roads.

Israel's campaign in Lebanon followed the launch of its offensive in the Gaza Strip on June 28 to try to retrieve another captured soldier and halt Palestinian rocket fire.

Israeli air strikes on Monday flattened the eight-storey Palestinian Foreign Ministry building in Gaza City and gutted the offices of a Hamas-led force in the northern Gaza Strip.

In the occupied West Bank, Palestinian gunmen ambushed a group of Israeli troops, killing one and wounding six others in the old city of Nablus, witnesses and military sources said.

(Additional reporting by Jerusalem bureau, Nadim Ladki, Alaa Shahine and Laila Bassam)

Source: REUTERS

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