Tornado Alley (PROG)

[F6]

Death toll approaches 200 in intense fighting between Israel and Hezbollah as hostilities threaten to spread to other parts of the region

Israel aims to uproot militant groups, put pressure on Tehran, Damascus

MARK MACKINNON
With a report from Associated Press
POSTED ON 17/07/06

JERUSALEM -- Less than 15 months after Lebanese celebrated the end of foreign occupation, their country stood on the edge of a new abyss yesterday, as Israeli warplanes killed dozens of people in a fresh round of air strikes and foreign-passport holders rushed to leave Beirut.

Lebanon's foreign policy has effectively been abdicated to Hezbollah, which prompted the Israeli escalation by firing dozens of rockets into the Israeli city of Haifa.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert warned of "far-reaching consequences" after the attack, which killed at least eight people at the city's main railway depot and injured dozens more.

The Israeli retaliation -- massive air strikes against Beirut and other parts of Lebanon -- pushed the toll from five days of fighting on both sides to at least 178, including seven Lebanese Canadians.

Fighting also raged in the Gaza Strip, as Israel ramped up its campaign to free three soldiers taken hostage, one by Palestinian militant groups and later two by Hezbollah. This was an apparent effort to uproot Islamic militant groups and put pressure on their backers in Damascus and Tehran. Five Palestinians, including three militants, were killed in the fighting, while fighter jets bombed the Palestinian foreign ministry in Gaza City.

The conflict threatened to spread to other parts of the region, with Israel asserting that the Haifa rockets had been supplied by Syria and Iran. Although Israeli leaders said Syria was not yet a target, Damascus warned that it would respond in an "unlimited" manner in the event of any Israeli attack. Iran said it would side with Syria in any wider conflict.

At the Group of Eight summit in St. Petersburg, Russia, leaders drafted a statement that put much of the blame on Hezbollah and Hamas, the Islamic movement that controls the Palestinian Authority, and they called for Israel to show the "utmost restraint" in its assault on Lebanon.

The Haifa attack was cited by the Israeli government as a major escalation in the conflict. Hezbollah said it had used a new weapon, the Iranian-made Raad rocket, and that it had intentionally not targeted Haifa's oil refinery and petrochemical plants.

"But the next time, [Hezbollah] will not spare anything in Haifa and its surroundings," the group announced on its al-Manar television station, which has continued to broadcast despite repeated Israeli attempts to knock it out.

Rockets also fell yesterday on the northern Israeli cities of Akko, Afula and Nahariya. Israel declared a state of alert in the north and advised residents to be prepared to enter bomb shelters as far south as Tel Aviv. U.S.-made Patriot anti-ballistic missile batteries were deployed throughout the north to intercept incoming rockets.

The rocketing of Israeli cities will only lead to heavier Israeli action in Lebanon, said Mark Heller, principal research associate at Tel Aviv University's Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies.

"It's possible that things will get out of control," he said. "And I don't think it's in the interests of Israelis or anyone else to have an expanded regional conflict."

Some analysts speculated that Hezbollah, by using Syrian-made munitions, was trying to goad Israel into opening another front against Damascus, although Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah said his group has the capability to take on the Israeli army alone.

"As long as the enemy pursues its aggression without limits and red lines, we will pursue the confrontation without limits and without red lines. The enemy doesn't know our capabilities or what we have," Sheik Nasrallah said in a taped televised address.

Israel attacked more than 80 targets in Lebanon yesterday. Apartments in Beirut were reduced to rubble. Israeli jets dropped leaflets on Hezbollah strongholds in south Lebanon, warning residents to leave before a major operation in the area. The Israeli army accused Hezbollah of using civilians in the south as human shields.

A human tide has already been moving across Lebanon, with an estimated 15,000 residents of the south arriving in the port city of Tyre and thousands more fleeing the country entirely by way of the last available route: overland to Syria. Israel has imposed a naval blockade and inflicted heavy damage on Rafiq Hariri International Airport yesterday, largely sealing the country from the outside world.

The new raid on the south quickly claimed heavy casualties. At least nine people were killed and 20 injured when Israeli helicopters fired missiles into a Lebanese army installation in Tyre. Many of the dead and wounded were believed to be civilians who had been huddling in a basement shelter.

Israel has been hitting Lebanon day and night since Hezbollah guerrillas killed eight Israeli soldiers and kidnapped two others in a brazen cross-border raid last week. At least 24 Israelis, including 12 civilians, have been killed since the fighting began.

Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora has repeatedly called for an immediate ceasefire, but has been rebuffed by Israel, which said yesterday that it will cease its offensive only if the kidnapped soldiers are returned and Hezbollah withdraws from southern Lebanon.

Vijay Nambiar, a special political adviser to United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, said he supported Mr. Siniora's ceasefire call.

However, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that any ceasefire that fails to deal with the issue of Hezbollah would mean that "we will have achieved very, very little indeed, and we will be right back here, perhaps in a worse circumstance."

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