Israel pounds Beirut’s southern suburb

By Alaa Shahine

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Israel pounded Beirut’s southern suburb
on Sunday, the fifth successive day of an offensive on Lebanon,
with no sign that its attacks on the Hizbollah guerrilla group
and civilian installations were near an end.

Lebanon has repeated its demands for an immediate
U.N.-backed cease-fire but the U.N. Security Council rejected
the pleas after the United States objected, diplomats said.

The air strikes, which killed 35 civilians on Saturday,
including 15 children, were meant to cripple Hizbollah and
force Lebanon to try stopping the guerrilla group from firing
rockets into Israel’s northern border, where measures just
short of a state of emergency have been ordered.

The bombing of Lebanese roads, bridges, ports and airports,
as well as Hizbollah targets, is Israel’s most destructive
onslaught since a 1982 invasion to expel Palestinian forces.

The attacks started after the group’s capture of two
Israeli soldiers in a cross-border operation on Wednesday.

A heavy bombardment in the early hours of Sunday targeted
Hizbollah’s al-Manar television building, the Israeli army
said.

The station’s signal twice disappeared briefly before
returning, and it was not immediately known if it was
broadcasting from its original location.

Israeli raids have previously targeted al-Manar and have
already flattened Hizbollah’s headquarters.

The campaign in Lebanon coincided with an offensive Israel
launched in the Gaza Strip on June 28 to try to retrieve
another captured soldier and halt Palestinian rocket fire.

FARMLAND

Israeli forces clashed with militants in Gaza on Sunday as
tanks moved back into the north of the Strip. Tanks and armored
personnel carriers, backed by helicopters with machine guns
sending down bursts of fire, moved into farmland near Beit
Hanoun, an area often used by militants for launching rockets.

Militants blew up hidden bombs and fired anti-tank
grenades. Palestinian witnesses said Israeli aircraft fired
three missiles, wounding four people, including one 11-year-old
boy.

In Beirut, Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora denounced
Israel for turning his country into a “disaster zone” and
appealed for foreign aid.

His speech came hours after Israel bombarded ports in
Christian areas for the first time and a helicopter missile hit
a lighthouse on Beirut’s seafront.

The United States, which has declined to urge Israel to
curb its offensive, argued in closed-door talks that the focus
for Middle East diplomacy for now should be on the weekend
summit in St Petersburg of the Group of Eight industrialized
nations, Security Council diplomats said.

The council planned another discussion of the conflict on
Monday, and hoped to begin work soon on a “substantive”
response to the conflict, said French U.N. Ambassador Jean-Marc
de la Sabliere, the council president for July.

Israel has said the way out would be for Lebanon to
implement a U.N. resolution demanding Hizbollah be disarmed.
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.

Hizbollah, backed by Syria and Iran, has said it wants to
swap the two captured Israeli soldiers with Lebanese and Arab
prisoners in Israel’s jails.

DEADLY ATTACK

An Israeli missile incinerated a van in southern Lebanon on
Saturday, killing 20 people, among them 15 children, in the
deadliest single attack of the campaign.

Police said the van was carrying two families fleeing the
village of Marwaheen after Israeli loudspeaker warnings to
leave their homes. Many of the bodies were charred.

At least 104 people, all but four of them civilians, have
been killed in the five-day assault, which has choked Lebanon’s
economy and forced tourists and foreigners to flee.

Four Israelis, including a five-year-old child, have been
killed and 300 wounded by about 700 rockets fired since
Wednesday at more than 20 towns.

The Israeli government gave authorities the power to shut
schools, factories and public institutions in the north in a
move that falls just short of a full state of emergency.

Israel has deployed Patriot missile batteries in the
northern city of Haifa to intercept rockets.

It also warned the Lebanese army on Sunday against shooting
at its aircraft and said it would not hesitate to strike “at
any party operating against it.”

Italy began evacuating nationals from Lebanon. Britain said
it was sending two Royal Navy ships to the Middle East for a
possible evacuation of British citizens. Thousands of people
have streamed to the Syrian border and safety.

(Additional reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza and
Irwin Arieff in the U.N. bureau)