Heavy Fighting Rages: Israel's Deeper Push into Lebanon
'Pakistan Times' Monitoring Desk

BOURJ AL-MULOUK (Lebanon): Heavy fighting raged Tuesday in the Lebanese border village of Aita al-Shaab, and Hezbollah television said 35 Israeli soldiers had been killed or wounded in the fighting.

Israeli warplanes pounded Shiite Lebanese villages in many areas along the border and struck Hezbollah strongholds deep inside the country.

Arab satellite channels carried live pictures as Israeli forces poured in a relentless bombardment of artillery shells on Aita al-Shaab.

Al-Manar TV reported that guerrilla fighters had Israeli forces pinned down and unable to evacuate their wounded. That apparently prompted the heavy renewed fighting. Huge clouds of smoke rose above the village and artillery concussions echoed across the valleys.

The Hezbollah television said fighters had ambushed Israeli soldiers near the town's main school building. Israeli authorities have not publicly commented on the Al-Manar claim of casualties.

Earlier Tuesday Israeli jets struck Hezbollah strongholds deep inside the country and civilian areas along the Mediterranean coast.

Not far to the east of Aita al-Shaab, a reporter on a hilltop overlooking the village of Kfar Kila saw columns of black smoke rising from the cluster of homes and surrounding hills about 1.2 miles from the Israeli border.

At least three airstrikes hit the area, and the thud of artillery shells from Israeli ground troops was constant. About 20 shells landed in the hills around Kfar Kila in the course of 45 minutes.

A Hezbollah fighter near the hilltop village said the battle for Kfar Kila began Monday, when several Israeli tanks crossed the border into Lebanon. Fighting lasted all day Monday, and Israeli ground troops withdrew into Israel Tuesday morning, he said.

Parts of Kfar Kila are within view of Israel, and Israeli troops were able to continue shelling the town from their own territory. Airstrikes continued on the town as well.

Artillery rained down on the nearby village of Deir Mimas as well, about 1.2 miles from Kfar Kila. The two villages sit next to one another on the side of a rocky hill.

Intense shelling had ended by early afternoon, though sporadic attacks continued.

The guerrilla group said it battled Israeli ground troops Adaisse and Taibeh, near the Christian town of Marjayoun. It released a statement saying four of its fighters died in the battles.

Israeli warplanes launched three air raids on targets along the Litani River, Lebanon's official news agency reported. They were accompanied by artillery shelling against villages in the central region of south Lebanon.

Ground Offensive

Israel's Cabinet late Monday approved a major expansion of its ground offensive, deciding to send troops up to the Litani, some 18 miles from the Israeli border.

A Lebanese government official denounced that decision, saying Israel was repeating the same mistakes it made in the past 30 years by invading the area.

"Security and stability can only be achieved by an Israeli withdrawal from occupied Lebanese territories, not by expanding the occupation," he said.

Israeli jet fighters also struck deep inside Lebanese territory, hitting Hermel, some 73 miles north of the Israeli border in the Bekaa Valley in eastern Lebanon. Warplanes fired at least five air-to-surface missiles on the edge of the town, targeting a road linking eastern Lebanon to western regions and the coastline.

About six hours later, warplanes returned to attack Hermel again, hitting a pickup truck loaded with cooking gas tanks, security officials said. The canisters exploded, sending flames shooting up from the vehicle for nearly an hour. The driver had pulled over and exited the vehicle before the attack, and was not hurt, they said.

In the west, Israeli warships offshore in the Mediterranean sent artillery into the villages of Mansouri, Shamaa and Teir Harfan around the port city of Tyre. No casualties were reported so far.

Another strike at an area near the Syrian border, about 6 miles north of Hermel, targeted the Qaa-Homs road, one of four official crossing points between Lebanon and Syria.

Lebanon's official news agency reported Israeli jets also hit early Tuesday near the Masnaa crossing into Syria, which was attacked several times in the last three days.

Tuesday's airstrikes mean that two of the four border crossings are now closed because of damage. Repeated airstrikes have made the main Beirut-Damascus highway impassable.

Airport Closed

The remaining crossings are Lebanon's main transport links to the outside world. Israel has hit the Beirut international airport, forcing its closure, and has imposed a naval blockade. Late last week the airport began receiving aid relief flights on a repaired runway.

The latest bombings came despite a supposed 48-hour Israeli suspension of air aids in Lebanon, prompted by worldwide outcry over an airstrike Sunday that killed 56 people, more than half of them children, on the southern Lebanese village of Qana.

The pause, which ends early Wednesday, was to give time for an investigation into the Qana attack, but Israel said its warplanes would still hit targets that presented an imminent threat, and at least three strikes were launched Monday.

In-depth

With a major expansion of its air and ground offensive, Israel set off a new aggressive plan Tuesday—by sending its troops deeper into Lebanon to—what it contended “clear out Hezbollah and to secure the territory until a multinational force is deployed there.”

Tel Aviv beamed the signal of completing the new push to the Litani River nearly 20 miles from the Israeli border in the next two weeks—after a cabinet meeting late on Monday night—ignoring global protests on carnage of innocent men, women and mostly children in Lebanon and by placing all possible chances of peace in the area—get vanished.

The meeting came amid a 48-hour suspension of most airstrikes by Israel, which was imposed after an airstrike over the weekend in the southern Lebanese town of Qana killed 56 Lebanese, more than half of them children. The attack sparked international outrage.

By early Tuesday, however, Israel had resumed air raids. Warplanes targeted a Hezbollah stronghold deep inside Lebanon and Hezbollah fighters battled with soldiers near the border. The Israeli army also reported heavy fighting between its troops and Hezbollah in the south Lebanon village Ayt ash Shab.

A senior Iranian cleric called on Muslim states to provide weapons to Hezbollah to fight Israel, an Iranian news agency reported Tuesday. Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, the hard-line head of the powerful Guardian Council, was quoted by the semiofficial Iranian Students News Agency as saying that Islamic states should arm Hezbollah in fighting Israel in Lebanon.

"Now, it is expected that Muslim states not spare any assistance to Hezbollah and the Lebanese people, especially providing weapons, medicine and food," Jannati told ISNA.

Israel and the United States accuse Iran of arming Hezbollah but Tehran has repeatedly said it only provides moral support.

Diplomatic Efforts Faltered

Diplomatic efforts to end the crisis faltered Monday, despite increased world pressure for a cease-fire after the devastating strike in Qana. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said the offensive would continue until Hezbollah has been neutralized.

"We will not give up on our goal to live a life free of terror," Olmert said.

President Bush also resisted calls for an immediate halt to fighting, saying any peace deal must ensure that Hezbollah is crippled. He said Iran and Syria must stop backing the Shiite militant group with money and weapons.

"As we work with friends and allies, it's important to remember this crisis began with Hezbollah's unprovoked attacks against Israel. Israel is exercising its right to defend itself," Bush said.
.
Up to now, several thousand soldiers had been engaged in the operation, fighting house-to-house battles with hundreds of Hezbollah fighters in Lebanese towns and villages close to the border. Last week, the Cabinet called up some 30,000 reserve soldiers, many of whom reported to their bases earlier this week to begin training.

Defense official said they expected thousands more soldiers to be sent to Lebanon as part of the expanded offensive. "We have reached the stage where we have to expand the operation," said Defense Minister Amir Peretz, without giving the dimensions of the next phase.

In a first stage, tanks and ground forces would move up to four miles into Lebanon, an officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they are not allowed to discuss government decisions with reporters.

Across the south, cars and trucks packed with women and children, mattresses strapped to the roofs and white flags streaming from the windows, made their way to the coast, then turned north. They passed flattened houses, shattered trees and burned-out cars strewn on the roadside.

Some described living on a piece of candy a day and dirty water as the fighting raged. "All the time I thought of death," said Rimah Bazzi, an American visiting from Dearborn, Mich., who spent weeks hiding with her three children and mother in the house of a local doctor in the town of Bint Jbail, scene of the heaviest fighting.

Condoleezza Rice

Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Ms Condoleezza Rice has said she expected a U.N. resolution for a cease-fire within a week, but also cautioned that "there's a lot of work to do." As part of a truce deal, a U.N.-mandated international force would be deployed in southern Lebanon to ensure guerrillas do not attack Israel.

Israel wants a strong, armed force with a mandate to confront militants, and Ramon reiterated Tuesday that Israel seeks

NATO involvement. Israel feels U.N. peacekeepers, deployed in south Lebanon since 1978, are at best useless.

Hezbollah's allies Syria and Iran also quietly entered the diplomacy on Monday. Egypt was pressing Syria not to try to stop an international force in the south, diplomats in Cairo said. Iran's foreign minister traveled to Beirut for talks with his French and Lebanese counterparts.

At least 524 people have been killed in Lebanon since the fighting began, according to the Health Ministry. Fifty-one Israelis have died, including 33 soldiers and 18 civilians who died in rocket attacks.

Four Incursions

And a report from Tyre says that Israeli ground troops Tuesday were involved in four different ground incursions in southern Lebanon as they kept up a major offensive across the border, police said.

The expansion of the ground offensive came as the Israeli security cabinet gave the army the green light to send ground forces up to 30 kilometers (19 miles) into southern Lebanon.

A spokesman for the UN force in the region confirmed that in the morning a limited number of Israeli troops had staged a new incursion around the area of Houla in the southeastern sector of the border.

"I can confirm that Israeli forces in the morning entered across the border in the general area of Houla in a limited incursion," said Milos Strugar, spokesman for UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL).

20 Israeli soldiers Killed

Meanwhile, Hizbullah said on Tuesday that over 20 Israeli soldiers were killed and one tank and a bulldozer were destroyed in heavy exchanges of fire with Israeli troops in southern Lebanon.

The clash took place near the village of Ayta a-Shaab. Another Israeli soldier was lightly hurt in Maroun A-Ras, also in southern Lebanon.

The Israeli army said that at least 20 Hizbullah fighters have been killed in the clashes.

According to Haaretz, Israeli units were operating in a number of areas within Lebanon on Tuesday morning, deep in the central and western fronts. A total of five units - thousands of soldiers - are currently deployed in Lebanon.

Hizbullah said that its fighters continued to confront Israeli ground troops in Kfar Kila, Adaisse, and Taibeh, near the Lebanese town of Marjayoun.

Although Israel suspended most airstrikes on the south for 48 hours, its warplanes struck deep inside the country Tuesday hitting roads linking Lebanon with Syria in the Hermel region.

Turkish MPs Quit Group

And a report from Ankara says that Twenty-five Turkish lawmakers have resigned since June from a parliamentary friendship group with Israeli colleagues in protest at the Jewish state's offensives in the Palestinian territories and Lebanon, parliamentary sources said Tuesday.

Seventeen of them are from the Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP) of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, one of the most vocal critics of Israel's military campaigns, the sources added.

The rest are from the center-left main opposition Republican People's Party and the centre-right Motherland Party.

The resignations came after group members were bombarded with mobile phone text messages and e-mails asking them to quit in protest against the Israeli assaults, the sources said.

The Turkish-Israeli friendship group is one of the most popular in the 550-seat Turkish assembly, with 263 members before the wave of resignations began.

Turkey has accused Israel of using excessive force on several occasions since its troops stormed Palestinian territories in June to rescue a kidnapped soldier and began pounding Lebanon three weeks ago in retaliation for the capture and killing of Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah guerrillas.

Turkey, a secular, non-Arab, Muslim-majority country has been Israel's main regional ally since the two countries signed a military deal in 1996. But ties have cooled with the Turkish government criticing the Jewish nation's actions in the region.●