Israel batters Lebanon, contemplates ground attack

By Lin Noueihed

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Israel pounded Lebanon from the air on
Friday and one general said it might soon expand ground
operations in its bloody assault on Hizbollah guerrillas.

After 10 days of relentless bombardment which has destroyed
much of Lebanon’s infrastructure, Israel has been unable to
stop Hizbollah firing rockets into the Jewish state, raising
the possibility that it may have to push across the border in
strength.

“It’s possible that in the coming days our ground
operations will increase,” Brigadier-General Alon Friedman told
Maariv newspaper. “We have many forces, we will carry out a
massive recruitment of reserves and it’s possible that many
more forces … will reach the border in the next few days.”

As thousands more foreigners were evacuated from Beirut,
four Israeli troops were killed in fierce battles with
Hizbollah guerrillas just inside Lebanon on Thursday, the
Israeli army said. Hizbollah said it lost two fighters in the
clashes.

Israel said two of its helicopters collided near the
Lebanese border, killing a pilot and injuring three crewmen.

Elite Israeli troops have been launching small-scale raids
in Lebanon to try to stop Hizbollah, a Shi’ite Islamist group
backed by Syria and Iran, from firing rockets into Israel.

Israel began its assault after Hizbollah captured two
soldiers and killed eight in a cross-border raid on July 12. It
has also waged a military campaign in Gaza since June 28 to
recover another soldier, seized by Palestinian militants.

Its campaign has killed at least 312 people in Lebanon, the
vast majority civilians, and displaced half a million.
Thirty-four Israeli troops and civilians have been killed.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said the war against
Hizbollah would continue “until we reach a point where the
marginal usefulness that is building to continue the military
operation will not be worth the price.”

Israelis still overwhelmingly back the war, with 90 percent
wanting it to go on until Hizbollah is driven from southern
Lebanon and 95 percent saying the army’s response was
justified, a poll in Maariv newspaper showed on Friday.

Despite the assault, Hizbollah is still firing rockets at
Israeli towns and combating Israeli troop incursions.

Israel has been wary of launching a full-scale invasion in
south Lebanon, only six years after it ended a 22-year
occupation that was resisted by relentless Hizbollah attacks.

AIR RAIDS

Israeli jets bombed Shi’ite districts in Beirut, the
eastern Bekaa Valley and southern Lebanon around sunrise on
Friday and struck a bridge on the main Beirut-Damascus highway
four times. The Mdeirej bridge has already been bombed twice.

In other raids, Israeli aircraft hit parked goods vans in
the Bekaa, and a private power generator and garbage trucks in
Beirut’s Christian suburb of Baabda, near the presidential
palace. There were no reports of casualties in the strikes.

At the U.N. Security Council, Secretary-General Kofi Annan
proposed ways to end the fighting but the United States, which
has blamed Hizbollah and its allies in Syria and Iran for the
conflict, again rejected an immediate ceasefire.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is expected to
travel to the region next week.

Hizbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said no amount of
international pressure would deflect the guerrilla group from
its demand that the Jewish state agree to a prisoner swap.

“If the entire universe came, it will not bring back the
Israeli soldiers unless through indirect negotiations and a
prisoner swap,” Nasrallah told Al Jazeera television.

He derided Israeli assertions that half Hizbollah’s
military potential had been destroyed and said its rockets
would still hit Israel even if its fighters were pushed from
the border.

“A land invasion will be a disaster for the Israeli army, a
disaster for their tanks, officers and soldiers,” he said.

In Gaza, Palestinian medics said Israeli shelling killed a
Hamas militant and three civilians on Friday, as tanks and
troops withdrew from a refugee camp after a three-day assault.

The medics said what appeared to be tank fire hit a house
in Gaza City’s Shijia neighborhood, killing Mohammed Harara of
the governing Hamas movement’s armed wing, his mother and two
other relatives. Two children were wounded.

Earlier on Friday, Israeli tanks and troops pulled out of
central Gaza’s Maghazi refugee camp after a three-day sweep in
which 15 gunmen and civilians were killed.

Israel has killed at least 115 Palestinians, around half of
them militants, during its Gaza offensive.

(Additional Reporting by Beirut, Jerusalem and Dubai
bureaus)