Israel hits Lebanon, U.N. plans stability force

By Lin Noueihed

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Israel bombarded Lebanon for a sixth day
on Monday and dismissed as premature a proposal for an
international stability force to help end the worst fighting
across the Israeli-Lebanese border in more than 20 years.

Israeli warplanes hit coastal targets in the north and
south, struck Beirut and damaged homes in the east belonging to
members of the Hizbollah guerrilla group, which fired more
rockets deep into the Jewish state.

An Israeli army spokesman also said some soldiers had
crossed the border overnight to destroy Hizbollah positions but
denied Israel had ground troops inside southern Lebanon.

“There was a very small incursion overnight to destroy a
few Hizbollah positions. … That has been done,” he said.

Lebanese televisions stations showed burning debris falling
over Beirut and said an Israeli plane had been shot down.
Israel’s Defense Minister Amir Peretz said no jet or helicopter
had been lost but an unmanned drone may have been downed.

The fighting, the worst since Israel invaded Lebanon in
1982, was triggered when Hizbollah, which is backed by Syria
and Iran and is part of the Lebanese government, seized two
Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid on northern Israel last
week.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Security Council
members would start hammering out a detailed agreement on
deploying a multilateral security force to south Lebanon.

But Israel said it was too soon to talk of sending the
force. “We’re at the stage where we want to be sure that
Hizbollah is not deployed at our northern border,” government
spokeswoman Miri Eisin said.

Army Radio quoted Israel’s chief of staff as saying Israel
planned to enforce a 1 km (0.5 mile) “security zone” to keep
Hizbollah away from the border.

Hizbollah is seeking the release of Lebanese and
Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. It has not commented on
international efforts to halt the fighting.

Echoing a muted call from the Group of Eight powers, the
European Union urged all sides to rein in violence, but stopped
short of demanding an immediate ceasefire.

Israel’s campaign has killed 179 people, all but 13 of them
civilians, and wounded more than 500. It has also destroyed
much of Lebanon’s civilian infrastructure.

Twenty-four Israelis have been killed in the fighting,
including 12 civilians hit in rocket attacks.

ISRAELI STRIKES

Israeli raids on Monday destroyed two army posts on the
northern Lebanese coast, killing at least six Lebanese
soldiers, and damaged the homes of Hizbollah officials in
eastern Lebanon, killing 11 people in more than 60 strikes.

Seven more people died in strikes south of Beirut,
including one on a coastal road linking it to the port city of
Sidon.

Several thunderous blasts echoed over the capital and black
smoke rose from a blazing fuel storage depot in the Christian
suburb of Dora. Civilian installations, petrol stations and
factories elsewhere were also hit, security sources said.

Beirut’s stock market remained closed after falling 14
percent last week.

Israel is demanding the disarming of Hizbollah in line with
U.N. Security Council resolutions — a task that is beyond a
fragile Lebanese government.

Lebanon, just emerging from three decades of Syrian
tutelage, fears that any attempt to tackle Hizbollah directly
would re-ignite civil war and split its army.

Hizbollah launched rocket attacks on Haifa on Sunday,
killing eight people in its deadliest strike on Israel and
prompting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to warn of far-reaching
consequences for Lebanon.

Hizbollah said it fired dozens more rockets at Haifa on
Monday. A three-storey building in the city collapsed, wounding
two people, medics said.

France, the United States, Britain and a host of other
nations scrambled to evacuate their citizens from Lebanon.

Thousands of foreigners have fled overland to Syria since
Thursday, despite Israeli air strikes on main roads.

Israel’s campaign in Lebanon followed the launch of its
offensive in the Gaza Strip on June 28 to try to retrieve
another captured soldier and halt Palestinian rocket fire.

Israeli air strikes on Monday flattened the eight-storey
Palestinian Foreign Ministry building in Gaza City and gutted
the offices of a Hamas-led force in the northern Gaza Strip.

In the occupied West Bank, Palestinian gunmen ambushed a
group of Israeli troops, killing one and wounding six others in
the old city of Nablus, witnesses and military sources said.

(Additional reporting by Jerusalem bureau, Nadim Ladki,
Alaa Shahine and Laila Bassam)