ISRAEL: Israel masses troops on Lebanese border as rockets shower down on northern Israel

Record ID: 395826

  • Title: ISRAEL: Israel masses troops on Lebanese border as rockets shower down on northern Israel
  • Date: 24th July 2006
  • Summary: (EU) SAFED, ISRAEL (JULY 23, 2006) (REUTERS) (SOUNDBITE) (English) BRIGADIER GENERAL SHUKI SCHOR OF THE NORTHERN COMMAND, SAYING: "We have been in two other villages on the Western sector in Marwachin and in Aytashab. Some of the forces already left, some of them are already in the area, controlling also the western sector and in the other places. I don't want to go into d
  • Embargoed: 8th August 2006 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Israel
  • Country: Israel
  • Topics: War / Fighting
  • Reuters ID: LVA1URFNGECURVJ1W1LAM5F497TS
  • Story Text: Rocket showers continued to hit northern Israel on Sunday (July 23), causing casualties and severe damage. In the latest violence, a rocket hit the community of Elkosh, several kilometres south of the Lebanese border, sparking fires in a field and damaging homes in the area.
    Throughout the day more than a dozen Hizbollah rockets slammed into the northern Israeli city of Haifa, killing two people and wounding 15 others, medics and the army said.
    Rockets hit at least two apartments, a house, an industrial zone and vehicles. One man was killed while driving his car while the second person was in a building. Medics said several people had been wounded in other towns.
    Israeli troops continued to fire artillery at Hizbollah targets and mass troops in southern Lebanon as the army pressed an offensive to drive Hizbollah guerrillas away from the border.
    Israel's Army radio reported Israel will move even more troops to Israel's north, broadening ground operations just inside the border.
    The army declined to comment on the report but said forces were carrying out "pinpoint" operations at specific locations close to the Israeli border in southern Lebanon.
    Military sources say several hundred soldiers are inside southern Lebanon trying to destroy guerrilla hideouts, weapons stores and rocket-launching sites.
    "We have been in two other villages on the Western sector in Marwachin and in Aytashab. Some of the forces already left, some of them are already in the area, controlling also the western sector and in the other places. I don't want to go into details," said Brigadier General Shuki Schor of the Northern Command.
    "The mission of the Israeli Defence Forces and of the Northern Command is to enter Lebanon to destroy as much as possible Hizbollah infrastructure, to bring to a situation that the Hizbollah will disarm, that the Lebanese government will assume responsibility and sovereignty over the south of Lebanon, according to the United Nations resolutions 425 and 1559 and of course to bring the two soldiers healthy back home," he added at a briefing in the rocket-hit town of Safed.
    The crisis erupted on July 12 when Hizbollah abducted two Israeli soldiers and killed eight others in a cross-border raid. The war, triggered by the Shi'ite group's abduction of two soldiers, has killed 365 Lebanese, mostly civilians, and 37 Israelis.
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