More Lebanon incursions, not invasion: Israel army

By Tom Perry

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Israel will pursue its war on Hizbollah
with more military incursions into south Lebanon but will not
unleash a full-scale invasion for the moment, an Israeli army
spokesman said on Saturday.

Thousands of Lebanese civilians have fled north fearing
Israel will invade and expand an 11-day-old bombardment of
Lebanon which has killed 345 people, mostly civilians.

Resisting international pressure for a ceasefire, U.S.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said before a trip to the
region that the conflict’s root causes — in her view
Hizbollah’s armed presence on Israel’s border and the role of
its allies, Syria and Iran — had to be tackled first.

An army spokesman said Israeli forces were making only
limited thrusts a few kilometers (miles) into south Lebanon.

“It will probably widen, but we are still looking at
limited operations,” he said. “We’re not talking about massive
forces going inside at this point.”

U.N. peacekeepers on the border said Israeli forces
withdrew on Friday night from the village of Marwaheen, just
inside Lebanon, but were still present further east in Maroun
al-Ras, scene of fierce fighting earlier this week.

“They entered these areas two or three days ago, so they
have now been in Maroun al-Ras for 72 hours,” UNIFIL spokesman
Milos Strugar said.

Israel has been building up its forces at the border and
has called up 3,000 reserves. Defense Minister Amir Peretz has
talked of a possible land offensive to halt rocket attacks that
have killed 15 Israeli civilians in the past 11 days.

But Israel is wary of mounting another invasion, only six
years after it ended a costly 22-year occupation of the south.
It has already lost 19 soldiers dead in the latest conflict.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said an Israeli ground
invasion would mark a “very serious escalation” of the
conflict.

“If they stay and intend to establish what they have
called, in the past, a security zone … it will be a security
zone for them, but for the others will be occupation and that
will intensify the resistance,” Annan told CNN.

Witnesses said Israeli warplanes launched repeated raids on
the town of al-Khiam, just north of the border. They also
struck intermittently near the port of Tire, and destroyed five
trucks in eastern Lebanon.

Hizbollah fired rockets into Israel from fields around the
southern town of Marjayoun, witnesses said. Israeli medics and
the army said at least 10 rockets hit towns across northern
Israel, injuring 10 people and damaging two houses.

‘OUTRAGEOUS PROVOCATION’

The war started when Hizbollah captured two soldiers and
killed eight in a July 12 raid into Israel, which had already
launched an offensive in the Gaza Strip to try to recover
another soldier seized by Palestinian militants on June 25.

Calling Hizbollah’s action an “outrageous provocation,”
Rice said on Friday she would visit the region early next week
in search of a durable peace deal.

“What I won’t do is … try to get a ceasefire that I know
isn’t going to last,” she said.

Washington supported proposals for an expanded
international force on the Israel-Lebanon border but details
were not fixed, a senior U.S. official told Reuters on
condition of anonymity. A 2,000-strong U.N force monitors the
border at present.

Israel’s military chief, Lieutenant-General Dan Halutz,
said nearly 100 Hizbollah fighters had been killed in the
offensive, far more than the half-dozen deaths announced by the
group.

The United States is rushing precision-guided bombs to
Israel, which requested the expedited shipment last week after
its air campaign in Lebanon began, The New York Times reported.

Across south Lebanon, families packed into cars and pickup
trucks — flying white sheets they hoped would protect them
from attack — and clogged roads to the north after Israeli
planes dropped leaflets on Friday warning residents to flee for
safety beyond the Litani river, about 20 km (13 miles) from the
border.

Amid growing concern about the plight of civilians in
Lebanon, Israel said it would ease humanitarian access.

U.N. relief agencies have called for safe passage to take
food and medical supplies to tens of thousands who have fled
their homes. Lebanese government and U.N. estimates put the
number of displaced at 500,000.

Foreigners have also flooded out of the country. Ships and
aircraft worked through the night scooping more tired and
scared people from Lebanon and taking them to Cyprus and
Turkey.

(Additional reporting by Jerusalem, Nicosia, Washington
bureau)