LEBANON: Israeli troops continue to withdraw as Hizbollah bury their dead and refugees flood home despite warnings.

Record ID: 395526

  • Title: LEBANON: Israeli troops continue to withdraw as Hizbollah bury their dead and refugees flood home despite warnings.
  • Date: 16th August 2006
  • Summary: SLATE INFORMATION
  • Embargoed: 31st August 2006 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Lebanon
  • Country: Lebanon
  • Topics: International Relations
  • Reuters ID: LVAA9QFQ0R3NQYBNZGZF4O8DV74L
  • Story Text: The Israeli army put on display missiles, rockets and various arms brought from southern Lebanon which it said were used by Hizbollah guerillas in the month-long war with the Jewish state.
    The army said the weapons were used against forces in southern Lebanon and against Israeli civilians in northern Israel.
    Some of the rockets were fired at Israel, some are Iranian and Syrian made. Anti-tank weapons which were caught by forces operating in southern Lebanon were brought to Israel and put on display in the city of Tel Aviv.
    Up to 2,000 of the 30,000 troops in Lebanon have left since the truce began on Monday (August 14), according to Israeli officials.
    Israel had initially said its troops would start pulling out only once an expanded UNIFIL and the Lebanese army began deploying. But the Israeli political source said the army wanted to let reservists go home and avoid unnecessary casualties.
    Israeli forces in southern Lebanon were preparing to hand over some of their positions to U.N. peacekeepers and withdraw more troops on Wednesday (August 16) as a truce with Hizbollah entered its third day.
    Israeli officials said the plan was for the U.N. force, known as UNIFIL, to deploy on Wednesday and Thursday (August 17) in some Israeli positions not seen by the army as strategically crucial.
    Lebanese rescue workers pulled bodies from the rubble of destroyed houses in several border villages, witnesses said.
    Aid agencies struggled along bombed-out roads thronged by refugees returning home on Tuesday to reach people who had been wounded or trapped by war in southern Lebanon.
    For the first time since a UN backed truce on Monday, large convoys carrying humanitarian aid set out from the southern port of Tyre to villages that had been isolated by fighting.
    The U.N.'s World Food Programme said it sent a ship to Tyre from Beirut carrying 21 trucks loaded with food, fuel and other supplies but delays caused by a continued Israeli naval blockade meant it would arrive only on Wednesday (August 16)
    It also sent 19 trucks to the south-astern town of Hasbaya and expected a large convoy to arrive from Syria and a plane from Jordan later on Tuesday.
    Many villagers came home to find bomb craters where their houses once stood, in some cases with the bodies of family members still buried under the rubble.
    At least 1,110 people in Lebanon and 157 people in Israel were killed in the conflict. Israel says it killed 530 Hizbollah fighters, including Sajed Dewayer, the head of Hizbollah's special forces. Hizbollah puts the toll at about 80.
    Since the truce, an estimated 200,000 Lebanese who had fled the war have headed home to battered villages in the south.
    In northern Israel, residents also returned after weeks away from their homes to escape cross-border Hizbollah rocket fire.
    Israel's top general, Dan Halutz, said Israeli forces could complete a withdrawal within 7 to 10 days.
    Israel's quicker withdrawal plans reflect concern that its forces on the ground are easy targets for Hizbollah attack.
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