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Israeli jets pound Lebanon

Posted on: Thursday, 3 August 2006, 03:53 CDT

By Lin Noueihed

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Israeli jets pounded Lebanon and troops battled Hizbollah guerrillas on Thursday while world powers struggled for a plan to end a war which Beirut said has killed 900 people and wounded 3,000.

Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora said a third of the casualties in the 23-day-old conflict were children under 12. He said a million Lebanese, or a quarter of the population, had been displaced and the country's infrastructure devastated.

His remarks were in a video message to a meeting of the Organization of the Islamic Conference in Malaysia. His death toll was higher than a Reuters tally of at least 646.

Fifty-six Israelis, including 37 soldiers, have been killed in the conflict.

The United States, France and Britain hope for a U.N. Security Council resolution within a week that would call for a truce and maybe strengthen existing U.N. peacekeepers until a more robust force can be formed, U.N. officials said.

But splits between the United States and France, a possible leader of the new force, over the timing of a ceasefire have complicated diplomatic efforts to end the fighting.

Israeli aircraft launched strikes on 70 targets in southern Lebanon and Beirut overnight, an Israeli army spokeswoman said.

Hizbollah, showing it can still fight after 23 days of Israeli bombardment, fired 70 rockets into Israel on Thursday, after showering the Jewish state with a record 231 missiles the previous day in salvos that killed one person and wounded 124.

No casualties were reported in the latest rocket strikes.

The Lebanon war, launched after Hizbollah snatched two Israeli soldiers in a raid across the border on July 12, has coincided with an Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip to recover another captured soldier and halt Palestinian rocket fire.

Israeli forces killed five Palestinian gunmen and three civilians, including a 10-year-old boy, in the southern Gaza Strip on Thursday as they pushed deeper into a militant stronghold, Palestinian witnesses said.

Israel's offensive in the Strip it quit last year has cost at least 161 Palestinian lives, over half of them civilians.

SUBURBS HIT

Israeli jets bombed Hizbollah-dominated suburbs of Beirut for the first time in days and hit a bridge in the northern Akkar region, as well as targets in the eastern Bekaa Valley and roads near the Syrian border, a Lebanese security source said.

Planes repeatedly bombed targets around the southern town of Nabatiyeh and shelling cut a road in the southern Bekaa Valley. Heavy Israeli air strikes and shelling also hit the area around the southern village of Blat, north of Marjayoun.

Israel is expanding the ground war in southern Lebanon, where seven brigades, or up to 10,000 troops, were fighting Hizbollah on Thursday, Israeli army radio said.

One Israeli soldier was killed and four were wounded near the border village of Aita al-Shaab on Wednesday, the Israeli army said on Thursday. Fifteen soldiers wounded in Lebanon were evacuated to Israel, the Israeli army said, adding that Hizbollah fire had delayed the transfer.

Hizbollah said its fighters had destroyed an Israeli tank near Aita al-Shaab. There was no Israeli comment.

U.S.-based rights group Human Rights Watch (HRW) said Israel appears to have deliberately bombed civilians and some of its strikes are war crimes.

It said Israel's contention that Hizbollah fighters were hiding among Lebanese civilians did not justify its "systematic failure" to distinguish between civilians and combatants.

An Israeli inquiry into Sunday's bombing of Qana, where 54 Lebanese civilians, most of them children, were killed, said the military made a mistake, but accused Hizbollah of using civilians as human shields.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said in remarks published on Thursday he expects a U.N. vote on a Lebanon truce next week.

He told Italy's Corriere della Sera newspaper that U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice did not expect a truce to end fighting in Lebanon in the next few days.

The United States and France, diplomats said, are rapidly ironing out differences on an initial resolution calling for a truce, a buffer zone and the disarmament of Hizbollah.

But Paris has insisted it would not send troops without a truce and an agreement in principle on the framework for a long-term peace deal by Israel, Hizbollah and the Beirut government. Washington wants a force as soon as fighting stops.

Once fighting ends, talks would begin at the United Nations on a second resolution for a permanent ceasefire all combatants could accept and authorize an international force in the south.

(Additional reporting by Jerusalem, UN and Milan bureaus)

Source: REUTERS

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