ISRAEL: Thirteen Israeli soldiers are reported killed, as Hizbollah-fired rockets continue to call in northern Israel

Record ID: 352257

  • Title: ISRAEL: Thirteen Israeli soldiers are reported killed, as Hizbollah-fired rockets continue to call in northern Israel
  • Date: 27th July 2006
  • Summary: (W3)ISRAELI BORDER WITH SOUTHERN LEBANON (JULY 26, 2006) (REUTERS) VIEW OF SOUTHERN LEBANESE TOWNS IN DISTANCE AS SEEN FROM ISRAELI BORDER ISRAELI ARMOURED VEHICLES ON HILLTOP IN SOUTHERN LEBANON BUILDINGS IN SOUTHERN LEBANESE VILLAGE SEEN IN DISTANCE ISRAELI MILITARY HELICOPTER FIRING MISSILE, THEN FIRING COUNTERMEASURES ISRAELI BULLDOZER TOWING ARMOURED VEHICLE WIDE OF B
  • Embargoed: 11th August 2006 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Israel
  • Country: Israel
  • Topics: War / Fighting
  • Reuters ID: LVAC68U8E7169NOURLFF4YT9S8Q2
  • Story Text: Thirteen Israeli soldiers were reported killed in fierce fighting with Hizbollah guerrillas in Lebanon on Wednesday (July 26), as dozens of rockets fired by Hizbollah guerillas continued to shower communities across northern Israel.
    In the latest ground fighting, Lebanese security sources said guerrillas ambushed an Israeli force advancing on the town of Bint Jbeil, four km (2.5 miles) from the Israel-Lebanon border.
    Hizbollah sources said the Israeli force was cut off and most of its vehicles were destroyed.
    Al Jazeera television said 13 soldiers had been killed. If confirmed, the toll would be the Israeli army's worst one-day loss since it launched its Lebanon offensive two weeks ago.
    But Israelis, Hizbollah fighters, and Lebanese citizens are not the only ones taking casualties. Israeli officials said on Wednesday (July 26) it regrets the "tragic" deaths of four U.N. military observers in southern Lebanon and will thoroughly investigate the air strike that killed them.
    "Prime Minister Olmert spoke a short time ago to Secretary Annan and he expressed our regret and sorrow at this terrible event. We totally and unequivocally reject a charge that this was a deliberate act against a UN position, on the contrary I know from day one of this crisis we have been co-ordinating with UN personnel on the ground to ensure their safety and too make sure that UN personnel are not caught up in the fighting this is not our intention," said Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev.
    The U.N. post was subjected to Israeli artillery fire 14 times since the crisis on the Lebanese Israeli border had started according the UN statement.
    U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan had called on Israel to investigate what he termed the "apparently deliberate targeting" by Israeli defence forces of the U.N. observer post.
    The incident at the U.N. observation post came at an awkward time for Israel. The United Nations Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs was in Israel Wednesday touring the city of Haifa, a frequent target of Hizbollah rocket attacks.
    More than 125 rockets fired by Hizbollah guerrillas slammed into the city of Haifa and other parts of northern Israel on Wednesday, wounding dozens of people, security sources and medics said.
    One rocket landed near a car in Haifa Wednesday, seriously wounding a driver, medics said. Thirty people were moderately wounded elsewhere.
    United Nations' chief aid official said fighting on both fronts had to stop immediately if a deepening crisis were to be averted.
    "I've come here like I have visited Lebanon and i visited Gaza to see for myself how indiscriminately the civilian population is suffering, how rockets are hitting homes, families. I understand here there was also a clinic for disabled. The next rocket could go into a kindergarten, this is totally condemnable. I have condemned it when i was in Lebanon, when i was in Hizbollah heartland. It has to stop we call for a cessation of hostilities. Civilians have paid a too high a price in what has happened in these recent terrible weeks. In lebanon hundreds are now dead and too many are also dead here," Jan Egeland, the U.N. Under-Secretary General For Humanitarian Affairs, told reporters.
    As some of Israel's soldiers were air-lifted to a hospital in Haifa, international diplomats were meeting in Italy to discuss the two-old war that has threatened to destabilise the entire Middle East.
    Participants at the crisis conference on Lebanon pledged to work urgently for a "lasting, permanent and sustainable" ceasefire, but did not demand that the fighting stop now.
    Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, speaking in Haifa, called on the international community to focus its attention on Hizbollah.
    "So, I hope, and it is our expectation from the international community not to stand, or try to find a way to stop what's going on, but to help the Lebanese government to confront Hizbollah, and to confront and to give us - us Israelis, us Lebanese, to live in peace in the future," Livni said.
    In Jerusalem Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert met with the Israeli Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee to discuss the situation.
    Hizbollah rockets have killed 18 civilians across northern Israel since the conflict erupted when the militia seized two Israeli soldiers and killed eight others in a cross-border raid on July 12. Hizbollah has fired more than 1,400 rockets into Israel.
    Israel's offensive against the Shi'ite group has killed 418 people in Lebanon, mostly civilians.
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