Hezbollah Hits Back: Israel Plans Full-Scale Attack on Lebanon
‘Pakistan Times’ Monitoring Desk

BEIRUT (Lebanon): With the killing of 50 more civilians by Israeli raids during last 24 hours, Tel Aviv has threatened to carry out massive raids in southern Lebanon in next 24 hours.

Meanwhile, there were reports that the Hezbullah chief Hassan Nasrallah was reached Syria. Hezbullah, however, didn’t confirmed the reports.

Israeli warplanes have renewed their attacks on targets in southern Lebanon, killing at least five people and wounding others.

Two people died when an Israeli bomb hit their home in the village of Deir Aamiss south of the city of Tyre.

Israeli jets also killed one man when they fired missiles at a building near the southern market town of Nabatiyeh on Friday morning, Lebanese officials said.
A separate Israeli air strike had destroyed a deserted four-story building near the town earlier on Friday, local officials said.

The building housed a construction company owned by a Hezbollah activist, the officials said.

Hussam Abu Shamet, a Jordanian man in a nearby house, was killed by missile shrapnel in that attack.

The Israeli air force carried out 27 bombing attacks east of Tyre on Friday morning and fired more than 300 artillery shells at the area, Lebanese police said.

Israel's army believes that at least 200 Hizbollah fighters have been killed during 17 days of fighting in Lebanon, a military source said on Friday.

Hezbollah has announced the death of 32 of its fighters, including two rescue workers since the fighting broke out.

The Israeli military offensive began after Hezbollah fighters captured two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid in early July.

Meanwhile, Israeli Cabinet authorized the army to call up 30,000 reserve soldiers in case the fighting intensified.

Hit by Hezbollah Rocket

Meanwhile, Hezbollah fired what it called a new kind of rocket, landing its deepest hit into northern Israel in 17 days of fighting. Israeli authorities reported that five rockets hit fields outside the town of Afula.

The area around Afula, 30 miles south of the Israeli-Lebanese border area, has been struck before, but Israeli security officials said Friday's attacks were the southernmost so far.

The strike came two days after Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah said in a televised speech that Hezbollah would start a new phase in the battle striking beyond the Israeli city of Haifa, which has been hit several times with lethal rocket fire.

Also Friday, the United Nations announced it had decided to remove 50 unarmed observers from posts along the Israeli-Lebanese border and relocate them with lightly armed U.N. peacekeepers.

The decision came three days after an Israeli airstrike destroyed one of the posts earlier this week, killing four U.N. observers from Austria, Canada, China and Finland.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has said Israel appeared to have struck the site deliberately — an accusation Israel vehemently denies. But a U.N. Security Council statement Thursday expressed shock and distress at the killing of the observers, but avoided any condemnation.

"These are unarmed people and this is for their protection," said Milos Struger, a spokesman for U.N. peacekeepers. He said the 2,000 peacekeepers in Lebanon have light weapons for self-defense.

The observer mission, known as UNTSO, had kept about 50 observers in four posts along the border. Two posts have already been abandoned: the one destroyed at Khiam on July 25, and a second near the village of Maroun al-Ras, where Hezbollah guerrilla gunfire wounded an observer on July 23.

Staff from the two remaining posts would be relocated at border posts of the peacekeeping mission, known as UNIFIL, Struger said. He would not say whether the move had been completed.

Also Friday, the United States evacuated about 500 more U.S. citizens from Beirut aboard a chartered cruise ship, believed to the last U.S.-organized departure for Americans.

Some 15,000 U.S. citizens have now left Lebanon.

European Union

The European Union said it has completed evacuating most of its 20,000 citizens who wanted to leave Lebanon, and will now help with mass evacuations of nationals of poorer, non-EU countries.

Diplomatic efforts to end the crisis emerged on several fronts. U.S. allies pressed Washington to speed efforts to secure a cease-fire in the crisis, which erupted after Hezbollah guerrillas captured two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid July 12, sparking Israel's harsh retaliation.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, attending a regional security conference in Malaysia, announced plans to return to the Middle East after visits to Lebanon and Israel earlier in the week. Israeli media said she will arrive in Israel on Saturday night and meet with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Sunday. There was no word on whether she would come to Beirut.

Rice has argued against an immediate truce, calling for a more "enduring" arrangement that would end Hezbollah's control of southern Lebanon and diminish the influence of Syria and Iran in Lebanon's affairs.

In other developments, Israeli warplanes and artillery intensified strikes, hitting Hezbollah positions and crushing houses and roads in towns in southern Lebanon, killing as many as 12 people, officials said. Hezbollah said it launched an assault on troops in a small border village seized by Israeli forces last weekend.

130 Targets

Israel said its warplanes hit 130 targets in Lebanon on Thursday and early Friday, including a Hezbollah base in the Bekaa Valley, where long-range rockets were stored and 57 Hezbollah structures, six missile launching sites and six communication facilities.

The bombardment — along with artillery pounding the south — was often hitting in populated areas and causing casualties.

An airstrike flattened a house in the village of Hadatha, and six people inside were believed dead or wounded, the state news agency reported. Hezbollah's al-Manar TV said all six were dead.

Missiles fired by Israeli jets also destroyed three buildings in the village of Kfar Jouz near the market town of Nabatiyeh, killing three and wounding nine people, including four children, Lebanese security officials said. The raid apparently targeted an apartment belonging to a Hezbollah activist.

The toll from the strike could rise. Civil defense teams were struggling in Kfar Jouz to rescue some people believed buried under the rubble of one of the buildings, a three-story structure, witnesses said.

Three women were killed in strikes on their homes in southern villages of Talouseh, Sheitiyeh and Bazouriyeh, the hometown of Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, security officials said.

Israeli artillery also fired more than 40 shells at the village of Arnoun just outside Nabatiyeh, next to the strategic Crusader's Beaufort Castle, which has a commanding view of the border area, witnesses said.

At least 443 people have been killed in Lebanon since fighting broke out between Israeli forces and Hezbollah guerrillas, most of them Lebanese civilians, according to security officials. But Lebanon's health minister estimated Thursday that as many as Lebanese 600 civilians have been killed so far in the offensive.

Thirty-three Israeli soldiers have died in the fighting and 19 civilians were killed in Hezbollah's unyielding rocket attacks on Israel's northern towns, the army said.

Israeli artillery hit a convoy evacuating villagers from southern Lebanon, slightly wounding a journalist and a driver.

In Geneva, the international Red Cross appealed for $81 million to help victims of the fighting in Lebanon. Life is becoming "unbearably dangerous" for civilians who have been trapped by the violence, the International Committee of the Red Cross said.

Resources and access to water and basic services are also very limited, the ICRC said in a statement, while medical evacuations and aid operations are very difficult and cannot meet the population's needs.

"In southern Lebanon, the No. 1 issue today is ensuring the safety of civilians and securing safe access for those engaged in medical and other humanitarian activities," said Pierre Kraehenbuehl, the ICRC's director of operations.

"At the same time, the damage to civilian infrastructure and the country's economy, coupled with the large-scale displacement of civilians, requires an emergency response that is likely to extend into next year," Kraehenbuehl said.

The Last Ship

A U.S.-chartered cruise ship left Beirut on Friday for Cyprus in the last officially scheduled departure of Americans fleeing the fighting in Lebanon, a day after the U.S. reactivated its evacuation operation. The vessel left with about 500 people on board, said Christos Matsis, port authority chief for Limassol, Cyprus.

Some 15,000 Americans — many of them dual citizens — have fled Lebanon since fighting began 17 days ago. U.S. officials had said their operation ended Wednesday, but then announced Thursday that the Orient Queen would return for more Americans.

Officials said they decided on the journey because the ship was still under contract with the U.S.

The U.S. Embassy was in contact with Americans who are still stranded in south Lebanon, and it urged them to await "further guidance," an embassy statement said.

"The most important thing is that they're safe, that they don't do anything rash. They should probably stay put, depending on where they are," a U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of security concerns.

The embassy was evaluating options for getting those Americans to safety, the official said.

By Friday, about 47,000 people had been evacuated through Cyprus, said Christos Kyriakides, head of the Cypriot civil defense authority.

Canadian officials said they had evacuated a total of about 11,500 of their nationals, including more than 1,700 on four ships Thursday. More Canadian ships were headed to Beirut on Friday.

The last daily Canadian evacuations would take place Saturday, officials said.●