ISRAEL/ LEBANON: Israeli forces prepare for another day of fighting in southern Lebanon after a night of ground battles

Record ID: 395769

  • Title: ISRAEL/ LEBANON: Israeli forces prepare for another day of fighting in southern Lebanon after a night of ground battles
  • Date: 24th July 2006
  • Summary: (W2) HAIFA, ISRAEL (JULY 24, 2005) (REUTERS) HELICOPTER ARRIVING AT HOSPITAL, CARRYING INJURED ISRAELI SOLDIERS ISRAELI SOLDIERS BEING TAKEN OUT OF HELICOPTER AND WHEELED TOWARDS AMBULANCE INJURED SOLDIERS BEING WHEELED INTO AMBULANCE AMBULANCE DRIVES AWAY WIDE OF HELICOPTER READY TO TAKE OFF AGAIN
  • Embargoed: 8th August 2006 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Reuters ID: LVAC0ZOMF68U3UK1A9HO13WBYM4P
  • Story Text: Hizbollah guerrillas battled Israeli forces pushing deeper into Lebanon and more air strikes hit the south on Monday (July 24) as U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice headed for the region to seek a "sustainable" ceasefire.
    Israeli tanks drove north from the border village of Maroun al-Ras, captured in heavy fighting last week, towards the town of Bint Jbeil, about four km (2.5 miles) inside Lebanon.
    The incursion is one of several limited forays by Israeli troops across the border in search of elusive Hizbollah fighters using mobile rocket-launchers to attack northern Israel.
    Warplanes battered southern towns and villages during the night, killing at least one person and wounding several more.
    Injured Israeli soldiers were evacuated by helicopter from southern Lebanon on Monday morning and taken to a hospital in the northern Israeli coastal city of Haifa.
    Israel's 13-day-old onslaught, launched after Hizbollah seized two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid on July 12, has killed 370 people and wrecked many civilian installations in Lebanon, but has not stopped rocket attacks that have killed 17 Israelis. Twenty Israeli soldiers have also been killed.
    Civilian casualties on both sides and a looming humanitarian crisis in Lebanon, where half a million people have fled their homes, have fuelled international pressure for a ceasefire.
    The United States, which blames Hizbollah and its allies in Syria and Iran for the crisis, wants any ceasefire deal to remove the threat to Israel posed by the Shi'ite group.
    Hizbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, who wants to swap the two soldiers for Lebanese and Palestinians in Israeli jails, said Israel's assaults would not stop cross-border rocket fire.
    Israel, after initially dismissing the idea, now says it would be willing for an international force to dislodge Hizbollah from south Lebanon and take control of Lebanon's border with Syria to stop the guerrillas re-arming.
    But just as Hizbollah has fought Israeli attempts to drive it from the south, it would surely resist military coercion by any international force, assuming one could be assembled.
    U.N. peacekeepers have been in the south since Israel's invasion in 1978 to attack Palestinian guerrillas, but their mission to restore Lebanese state authority there has remained unfulfilled.
    Israel's army said it had struck more than 270 targets across Lebanon in the last 24 hours. They included missile launchers, buildings and vehicles used by Hizbollah, as well as communications lines, roads and bridges. More than 90 Hizbollah missiles landed in Israel during the same period.
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