ISRAEL: Residents of Northern Israel wake up in shelters for another day of fighting

Record ID: 398082

  • Title: ISRAEL: Residents of Northern Israel wake up in shelters for another day of fighting
  • Date: 15th July 2006
  • Summary: WIDE OF INTERVIEW
  • Embargoed: 30th July 2006 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Israel
  • Country: Israel
  • Topics: Defence / Military
  • Reuters ID: LVABQRQZA6ZGE0CFH6OGP2RWYT8U
  • Story Text: Israel fired rockets near the Lebanese-Syrian border on Saturday (July 15), heightening fears that it could hit Syria, as well as Lebanon, in a campaign to dislodge Syrian-backed Hizbollah fighters from its northern border.
    At least 29 civilians were killed in other air strikes as Israel battered Lebanon for a fourth straight day. Dozens of Hizbollah rockets fell in Israel, wounding several people.
    Witnesses said Israeli planes fired four rockets at the Masnaa crossing point between the last Lebanese post and the first Syrian army position on the Beirut-Damascus road.
    A Syrian official also said Israel had not attacked Syria. President George W. Bush, who has declined to urge Israel to curb its attacks, said Syria should tell Hizbollah, which is also backed by Iran, to stop cross-border attacks.
    An Israeli missile incinerated a van near the southern port of Tyre, killing 17 people, including eight children, and wounding six, police said. The van was carrying families fleeing the village of Marwaheen after Israeli loudspeaker warnings to leave their homes. Seven of the dead were from a single family.
    Israeli aircraft also flattened a nine-storey building where Hizbollah had its main office in Beirut, and attacked roads, bridges and petrol stations in north, east and south Lebanon, killing 12 people and wounding 32, security sources said.
    "We can confirm that an attack was made on an Israeli war ship and four to five servicemen are missing, the ship was somewhat damaged it was hit by an Iranian maid shore to sea missile we have proof of the deep fingerprints of Iran's involvement with Hizbollah," Israeli brigadier general Ido Nechoshtan. "We attacked the Hizbollah headquarters in Beirut, in the Shiite district of Dahya, it was a compound that includes the headquarters which is the nerve centre of the Hizbollah operation and it was completely destroyed," Nachoshtan added.
    Hizbollah announced one of its fighters had been killed, only the second such death it has announced this week.
    Israel's campaign, launched after Hizbollah captured two Israeli soldiers and killed eight on Wednesday, has killed 96 people, all but three civilians, and choked Lebanon's economy. It aims not just to force Hizbollah to free the soldiers, but to destroy its ability to launch rocket attacks on northern Israel, where four civilians have been killed this week.
    Israel said on Saturday the Lebanese guerrilla group Hizbollah had fired an Iranian-made guided missile at one of its naval ships off Beirut and not hit it with an explosives-laden drone as previously claimed.
    A military source said a C802 radar-guided missile with a range of 60 miles (100 km) had been fired at the ship as it sat around 30 km off the Lebanese coast on Friday, enforcing a blockade on Lebanon's ports.
    Israeli media reported that Hizbollah had said it hit the ship with a drone packed with explosives.
    The missile strike caused substantial damage to the vessel and left four sailors missing. Israeli recovered the body of one of the four on Saturday. The ship was towed back to port in Haifa, still smouldering from the attack.
    The source said two of the land-to-sea missiles were fired on Friday. The other hit and sank an Egyptian merchant ship, he said. Egypt has not confirmed the loss of a merchant vessel.
    Israel believes that Hizbollah, a group backed by Iran and Syria, has between 10,000 and 12,000 rockets in its arsenal with a variety of ranges, from around 30 km to 70 km.
    The European Union, in a statement at the G8 summit, said Israel's assault on Lebanon was disproportionate. A United Nation's mission is due to arrive inthe Middle East in an effort to defuse the escalating situation.
    "We are cooperate with UN delegation, I am not aware of any UN delegation. I do not think that we need any UN instructions decisions or recomendations to understand what we have to do here," Israeli Army Chief Dan Hallutz told reporters as he inspected a house that was hit by a Hizbollah rocket in Meron, in northern Israel.
    The Israeli army said on Saturday it had struck about 150 targets in Lebanon so far, fewer than a dozen of them linked directly to Hizbollah. Most have hit civilian installations.
    Israeli army chief Dan Halutz said on Friday more targets would be bombed in a bid to remove Hizbollah from the border and replace it with a force answering to the Lebanese government.
    Israel was bombarding roads in the north and east to try to seal Lebanon's land border with Syria. It has already bombed Beirut's international airport and blockaded Lebanese ports.
    Several Hizbollah rockets hit the Israeli town of Tiberias, the furthest they have landed so far. No casualties were reported in the town, 35 km (22 miles) from the border.
    Hizbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, speaking shortly after Israeli jets destroyed his Beirut home, announced on Friday that his fighters had hit an Israeli warship off Beirut.
    The Israeli military said it had recovered the body of one of four sailors missing from the warship. A military source said Hizbollah had fired an Iranian-made missile at the vessel.
    The worst violence in Lebanon in a decade coincided with an Israeli attack on the Gaza Strip begun last month to try to get back another captured soldier, halt Palestinian rocket fire and destroy institutions of the Hamas-led government.
    Israeli aircraft attacked the Palestinian Economy Ministry and a house in Gaza on Saturday. One Hamas militant was killed in the strike on the house and eight people were wounded.
    Since the Gaza offensive was launched on June 28, Israel has killed about 85 Palestinians, around half of them militants.
    The Beirut government, led by an anti-Syrian coalition, lacks the unity and firepower to disarm Hizbollah, the only Lebanese faction to keep its guns after the 1975-90 civil war.
    After Israeli troops quit Lebanon in 2000, Hizbollah confined its attacks largely to the disputed Shebaa Farms area, but its bold assault on Wednesday shattered the tacit rules that had kept the lid on border violence for six years.
    The blistering Israeli response is the fiercest since a 17-day blitz on Hizbollah strongholds in the south in 1996.
    Arab foreign ministers discussed the crisis in Cairo, but it was not clear what they could do. Syria has pledged to back Hizbollah and Lebanon against Israel's "barbaric aggression". Saudi Arabia has blamed Hizbollah for "uncalculated adventures".
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