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Israel renews raids on Lebanon

Posted on: Friday, 4 August 2006, 21:49 CDT

By Yara Bayoumy

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanon suffered more Israeli airstrikes on Saturday, a day after jets killed at least 40 civilians and Hizbollah rockets hit deep inside Israel, as world powers edged slowly toward a deal to end hostilities.

The main division on a draft U.N. Security Council resolution is between France and the United States. Paris wants existing U.N. peacekeepers and Lebanon's army to monitor a truce, while Washington wants the Israeli army to stay in southern Lebanon until an international force arrives.

France's U.N. ambassador said after talks with the United States on Friday: "We're still working on it." U.S. ambassador John Bolton said: "There are still some issues that we have not resolved, but I think we have come a little bit closer."

An agreement could come over the weekend, officials said, then a Security Council vote could be held within 24 hours. But as the war entered its 25th day, it is not clear if the protagonists would heed a U.N. call for an end to hostilities.

Israel's ambassador to the United States said his country would only agree to an end to fighting if Hizbollah released the two Israeli soldiers whose July 12 capture sparked the conflict.

Israel's immediate goal is "the unconditional release of the two hostages ... which would constitute the end of hostilities," Ambassador Daniel Ayal told Reuters.

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State David Welch is to visit Beirut on Saturday for talks with Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, Lebanese political sources said.

KILLED WHILE PICKING PEACHES

Underscoring the need for a peace deal, was yet more violence.

Early on Saturday, an explosion echoed across Beirut and Hizbollah's television station said Israel had launched air raids on the southern suburbs run by the guerrilla group.

Israeli jets also hit a refugee camp in the coastal area south of Tyre which wounded one civilian, security sources said. Another air raid shook the northern entrance to Tyre. Israeli helicopters hovered overhead.

On Friday, one Israeli airstrike killed 33 farm workers loading plums and peaches onto trucks and wounded another 20 near Qaa, in the Bekaa Valley close to the Syrian border.

"I was picking peaches when three bombs hit. Others were having lunch and they were torn to pieces," said Mohammad Rashed, one of the wounded. Syria's official news agency said 17 of the dead were Syrian migrant workers, five of them women.

"The air force spotted a truck that was suspected to have been loaded with weapons cross from Syria into Lebanon on a route that is routinely used to transport weapons," said an Israeli army spokesman. "The truck entered into a building and remained inside for an hour, then left and returned to Syria."

He said that when the truck left, the building was attacked.

Hizbollah's response was not long in coming. Several rockets landed in or near the Israeli city of Hadera, some 80 km (50 miles) from the border -- the deepest rocket attack so far.

FOUR BRIDGES DESTROYED

Fighting raged in the south as Israeli troops tried to expand seven small border enclaves they control.

Hizbollah fighters killed three Israeli soldiers with an anti-tank missile near Markaba, Israel's army said. Al Arabiya television said five soldiers had been killed. The Israeli army said it killed at least 16 Hizbollah guerrillas on Friday.

Israeli aircraft also destroyed four bridges on the main coastal highway north of Beirut.

The bombing of bridges in the Christian heartlands north of Beirut cut off the coastal highway to Syria, which the United Nations called its "umbilical cord" for aid to Lebanon.

The bridge at Maameltein, north of Beirut, was split by a huge crater. Further north, another bridge lay in the valley it once spanned.

"The whole road is gone," said Astrid van Genderen Stort of the U.N. refugee agency. "It's really a major setback because we used this highway to move staff and supplies into the country."

Israel said it had destroyed the bridges to prevent Syria from re-arming Hizbollah, which is also backed by Iran.

At least 727 people in Lebanon and 74 Israelis have been killed in the conflict, ignited by a cross-border raid in which Hizbollah captured two Israeli soldiers on July 12.

Israeli airstrikes also killed four Palestinians, including a militant, in south Gaza on Saturday, as troops moved closer to a refugee camp as part of an offensive against militants, medics and witnesses said.

(Additional reporting by Jerusalem, Geneva, Baghdad and United Nations bureaux)

Source: REUTERS

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