posted July 16, 2006 11:54 AM
Hezbollah Rockets Hit Israel's Third-Largest City
U.S. Begins Evacuation Plans for 25,000 Americans in Lebanon
By HAMZA HENDAWI, APBEIRUT, Lebanon (July 16) - Israeli airstrikes reduced entire apartment buildings to rubble and knocked out electricity in swaths of the Lebanese capital Sunday, and Israel dramatically escalated the ferocity of its campaign after Hezbollah rockets hit the northern city of Haifa.
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Press photographers run for cover in the southern Lebanese suburb of Dahyieh Junubiya, a Hezbollah stronghold.
Eight people were killed in Haifa when Hezbollah rockets smashed into the city train station in retaliation for Israel's overnight barrage on the capital. Soon after, Israeli warplanes bombarded the guerrilla group's headquarters in south Beirut again with a barrage of missiles, sending palls of smoke over the crowded residential area. More missiles shook the city in the afternoon, targeting the same area.
Casualties continued to mount: Police and residents said 41 people died in the past 24 hours, nearly all civilians, raising to 148 the five-day death toll in Lebanon. In Israel, 23 have died, including 15 civilians killed by rocket fire.
Beirut, a city of 1.5 million people, was emptying as residents fled to the relative safety of the mountains and the eastern Bekaa Valley - though in the past 24 hours Israel expanded its strikes to the entire country.
U.S. assessment teams arrived at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut Sunday to work on evacuation plans for the 25,000 Americans living or working in Lebanon.
Both sides warned of worse to come in the battle, sparked by Hezbollah's snatching of two Israeli soldiers last week. Fears mounted that the fight could expand as Israel accused Iran and Syria - top Hezbollah backers - of supplying the guerrillas with sophisticated new rockets that hit Haifa.
The Syrian government warned of an "unlimited" response if Israel attacks it. "Any aggression against Syria will be met with a firm and direct response whose timing and methods are unlimited," Information Minister Mohsen Bilal said.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Sunday that there would be "far-reaching consequences" for the rocket attack on Haifa.
"Nothing will deter us," he said at the beginning of his government's weekly Cabinet meeting. "There will be far-reaching consequences in our relations on the northern border and in the area in general."
The head of Israel's northern command, Maj. Gen. Udi Adam, warned residents of southern Lebanon to evacuate "because in two or three hours we are going to attack the south of Lebanon heavily."
But Israeli warplanes had already destroyed many bridges, overpasses and roads, splitting neighborhoods and cutting off south Lebanon from the rest of the country. Travelers passed from one place to another only by long detours over mountain roads.
Hezbollah said its Haifa strike had avoided the city's petrochemical facilities, though an oil refinery was targeted. It warned on its Al-Manar TV station: "Next time, it will not spare anything in Haifa and its surroundings."
A Hezbollah Cabinet minister warned that the guerrillas would strike at Israeli oil installations if Lebanon's were targeted.
"If our installations are targeted, the installations of the enemy will not be spared from the strikes of the resistance," Energy Minister Mohammed Fneish told reporters.
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Israeli officials said the guerillas used Iranian-made Fajr rockets n the Haifa strike, with a longer range and far larger warhead than the relatively small Katyusha rockets they normally fire. But Shaul Mofaz, an Israeli Cabinet minister and former army chief of staff, later toured the Haifa train depot and said the rockets were Syrian-made.
Hezbollah rockets also hit the northern Israeli cities of Acco - which has a large Arab population - and Nahariya, and residents of the region were told to head to bomb shelters.
Iran denied Israeli claims it had provided rockets and had sent some 100 of its elite Revolutionary Guards to Lebanon to help the Shiite Muslim guerrillas.
It vowed its support for Damascus if Syria is attacked. "We hope the Zionist regime does not make the mistake of attacking Syria. Expanding the front of aggression and attacks ... would definitely face the Zionist regime with unimaginable damages," said Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi.
The Lebanese government accused Israel of committing "real annihilation" against Lebanon and of using internationally prohibited weapons. It did not elaborate.
The Cabinet, in a statement, disclosed that Italy had relayed Israeli conditions to stop the offensive: the handover of two Israeli soldiers and withdrawal of Hezbollah guerrillas to beyond a river 30 kilometers (18 miles) north of the Israel-Lebanon border, to push back the threat of rocket fire on northern Israel.
The damage in southern Beirut - a teeming Shiite district where Hezbollah's main headquarters are located - was colossal after Israel unleashed its worst bombardment yet overnight, before the Haifa strike. A series of 18 explosions rocked the city before sunrise.
Al-Manar television, Hezbollah's main voice to the world, was knocked off the air for eight minutes by the pounding. Press officer Ibrahim Farhat said two employees were very lightly injured and the building was "totally destroyed." He refused to say how the station was coping and from where it was broadcasting, for security reasons.
The Jiyeh power plant, on Beirut's southern outskirts, was in flames after being hit, cutting electricity to many areas in the capital and south Lebanon. Firefighters pleaded for help from residents after saying they didn't have enough water to put out the blaze.
Large swaths of the capital were covered in fine white dust from the barrage. Around the Hezbollah compound in the southern district - known as Dahiyah - entire blocks were littered with heaps of rubble and twisted metal, and fires raged.
One building collapsed on its side like a sandwich, and other apartment buildings were reduced to rubble or had their upper floors collapsed into those below. The steel gates of the Hezbollah compound were mangled and buried in the rubble of the demolished structures inside.
Furniture pieces, blankets, mattresses, clothes and soft toys were scattered on the streets. A copy of the Quran, Islam's holy book, lay in the street with its dusty pages fluttering until it was reverently lifted and kissed by a Hezbollah gunman.
Dahiyah was empty except for guerrillas and a few residents who returned to their homes to collect belongings before fleeing again to take refuge elsewhere.
"We want to sleep on our own pillows in the shelter," Mariam Shihabiyah, a 39-year-old mother of five said as she emerged from scrounging a few supplies from her apartment in a badly damaged building. "I just want them and our clothes, that's all ...Can you believe what happened to Dahiyah?"
Hezbollah denied Israeli media reports that its leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, had been wounded in an airstrike Sunday, Arab and Lebanese media said.
In south Lebanon, eight members of a Lebanese family, three relatives, their Sri Lankan maid and an Iraqi worker were killed in an Israeli airstrike in the village of Jibsheet, residents said. The raid, apparently targeting the Hezbollah commander in south Lebanon, Sheik Nabil Kaouk, demolished a nearby three-story building. Kaouk was not at home at the time.
Four other people were killed in the village of Zibedine, residents said.
The government appealed to residents not to hoard food, especially bread, assuring them that supplies in the country could last months. Throughout the capital, most stores were shut Sunday, and traffic was much lighter than usual even for a weekend morning.
Trying to defuse the crisis, Lebanon's Western-backed, anti-Syrian prime minister indicated Saturday night he might send his army to take control of southern Lebanon from Hezbollah guerrillas - a top U.N. demand but also a move that might risk civil war.
Choking back tears, Prime Minister Fuad Saniora went on television to plead with the United Nations to broker a cease-fire for his "disaster-stricken nation."
But on Sunday, Lebanon's president - a staunch pro-Syrian and close ally of Hezbollah - vowed that Lebanon "will not surrender" and blasted the United Nations, saying it was procrastinating in intervening to give Israel time to force Lebanon into submission.
Reacting to Saniora's statements, Israel's Vice Premier Shimon Peres said Lebanon must prove it was serious by deploying troops on the border.
The United States and United Nations have long demanded the Lebanese government deploy the army in the south, which Hezbollah guerrillas effectively control. But any effort by Saniora's Sunni Muslim-led government to use force against the Shiite Muslim Hezbollah guerrillas could trigger another bloody civil war in Lebanon. Many fear the 70,000-strong army itself might break up along sectarian lines, as it did during the 1975-90 civil war.
07-16-06 06:54 EDT
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posted July 16, 2006 11:54 AM
