An Israeli tank crosses the Israel-Lebanon border, west of Avivim, late night August 1, 2006. (Kai Pfaffenbach - ISRAEL/Reuters)
Posted on 08/01/2006 7:53:25 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
BEIRUT, Lebanon - Israel poured up to 10,000 armored troops into south Lebanon Tuesday, and separately dropped helicopter-borne commandos deep into the eastern Bekaa Valley where they raided a Hezbollah-run hospital and fought pitched battles with guerrillas, in a major escalation of the three-week-old war.
The Israeli military would not comment on its raid into the ancient city of Baalbek, once a Syrian army headquarters 80 miles north of Israel. It was the deepest ground attack on Lebanon since fighting began 21 days ago.
The ferocity of the battles in Baalbek and across southern Lebanon on Tuesday and the determination of the Israelis to keep fighting quelled expectations for an early cease-fire, although U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said an agreement on how to end the conflict was possible within days, not weeks.
Hezbollah's rocket attacks into Israel, meanwhile, diminished. Hezbollah fired just 10 rockets across the border Tuesday, well below an average of about 100 a day since fighting began.
Early Wednesday, Hezbollah's chief spokesman Hussein Rahal told The Associated Press Israeli troops landed near the Hezbollah-run Dar al-Hikma Hospital in Baalbek, about 10 miles from Lebanon's border with Syria.
"A group of Israeli commandos was brought to the hospital by a helicopter. They entered the hospital and are trapped inside as our fighters opened fire on them, and fierce fighting is still raging," Rahal said early in the operation.
Rahal dismissed as "untrue" reports that the Israeli commandos managed to snatch some patients from the hospital and spirit them away in helicopters. Hezbollah's capture of two Israeli soldiers in a July 12 cross-border raid triggered the Israeli offensive.
Fighting between Israeli commandos and Hezbollah guerrillas around the hospital raged for more than four hours and planes dropped flares over the city during the clashes, witnesses said. Israeli warplanes staged more than 10 bombing runs around the hospital as well as on hills in east and north Baalbek where Hezbollah's Shiite supporters live, they said. There was no immediate word of casualties.
Witnesses said the hospital was hit in an Israeli airstrike and was burning.
The fighting ended at about 4 a.m. with no immediate word from either side on the outcome, residents said.
Residents said the Dar al-Hikma hospital is financed by an Iranian charity, the Imam Khomeini Charitable Society, which is close to Hezbollah. The hospital is also run by people close to the Shiite militant group, the residents said on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation.
Baalbek, about 10 miles from the Syrian border, is a city with spectacular Roman ruins as well as the barracks of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards when they trained Hezbollah guerrillas there in the 1980s.
The last time Israel forces were known to have gone that far on the ground into Lebanon was in 1994, when they abducted Lebanese guerrilla leader Mustafa Dirani, hoping to use him to get information about missing Israeli airman Ron Arad. Dirani was released in a prisoner exchange 10 years later.
In southern Lebanon on Tuesday, up to 10,000 troops in armored personnel carriers and backed by tanks were operating in Lebanon along the border zone, Israeli defense officials said. Israel called up 30,000 reservists over the weekend and thousands of them were gathering at staging areas on the Israeli side of the border, ready to join the battles.
Israel had 100,000 troops in Lebanon at the height of its 1982 invasion of Lebanon that began an 18-year occupation of the south.
Troops battled guerrillas after Israel ordered its army to punch all the way to the Litani River, about 18 miles from the border.
They entered through four different points along the border and moved at least four miles inside Lebanon. Israeli officials said their soldiers were to go as far as the Litani, and hold the ground until an international peacekeeping force comes ashore.
But the army later said it had distributed leaflets northeast of the river at villages where Hezbollah was active. The leaflets told people to leave, suggesting that the new offensive could take Israeli soldiers even deeper into Lebanon.
Despite mounting civilian deaths, President Bush held fast to support for Israel and was pressing for a U.N. resolution linking a cease-fire with a broader plan for peace in the Middle East. Staking out a different approach, European Union foreign ministers called for an "immediate cessation of hostilities" followed by efforts to agree on a sustainable cease-fire.
State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said he expects some action in the Security Council in the coming days, hopefully this week.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said it was not in Israel's interest to agree to an immediate cease-fire because every day of fighting weakens the guerrillas.
"Every additional day is a day that drains the strength of this cruel enemy," he said. "Every extra day is a day in which the (army) reduces their capability, contains their firing ability and their ability to hit in the future."
The Israelis want to keep Hezbollah off the border so their patrols and civilians along the fence are not in danger of attack. The army also hopes to push Hezbollah far enough north so that most of the guerrillas' rockets cannot reach the Jewish state.
Israel resumed sporadic airstrikes — hitting Hezbollah strongholds and supply lines from one end of Lebanon to the other — despite a pledge to suspend such attacks for another day in response to world outrage over the killing of 56 Lebanese in a weekend bombing.
Aid groups had hoped to take advantage of the supposed 48-hour lull in airstrikes to get food and medicine to civilians trapped in the south. But Israel denied access to two U.N. convoys. Others who made the journey described airstrikes close to their convoys, and bodies along the road.
At nightfall Tuesday, Israeli troops were fighting Hezbollah at several points along the border in intense ground battles. Reporters and Arab television reported especially heavy fighting and Israeli artillery bombardment at the village of Aita al-Shaab.
The Israeli army said late Tuesday that three Israeli soldiers died and 25 were slightly wounded by small arms fire and anti-tank rockets in Aita al-Shaab.
Israeli Cabinet Minister Haim Ramon said the fighting to date had killed about 300 of Hezbollah's main force of 2,000 fighters, which does not include its less-well trained reserves. "That's a very hard blow," he said.
Hezbollah has said only 46 of its fighters were killed. Four were lost in battles with Israeli ground troops in Adaisse and Taibeh, near the Christian town of Marjayoun, about five miles from the border with Israel, Hezbollah said.
To the east at Kfar Kila, reporters saw at least three airstrikes, and the thud of artillery shells from Israeli ground troops was constant. About 20 shells landed in the hills around Kfar Kila during a 45-minute period.
Israeli jet fighters also struck deep inside Lebanese territory, hitting Hermel, 75 miles north of the Israeli border in the Bekaa Valley. Warplanes fired at least five air-to-surface missiles on the edge of the town, targeting a road linking eastern Lebanon to western regions and the coastline.
In the west, Israeli warships fired artillery into the villages of Mansouri, Shamaa and Teir Harfan around the port city of Tyre. No casualties were reported.
Another strike at an area near the Syrian border, about six miles north of Hermel, targeted the Qaa-Homs road, one of four official crossing points between Lebanon and Syria. Two of the four border crossings are now closed because of damage, and repeated airstrikes have made the main Beirut-Damascus highway impassable.
Polls in Israel show wall-to-wall support for Israel's fight against Hezbollah, even with Israeli civilians enduring a barrage of rocket fire and the army poised for a sweeping ground offensive that is sure to lead to more casualties.
But the deaths of 56 Lebanese in the devastating weekend strike in Qana focused attention on civilian casualties.
Three more civilians were killed and three seriously wounded when Israeli warplanes hit a house in the southern Lebanese town of Lweizeh, Lebanese security officials said Tuesday.
Also, the Lebanese Red Cross said the bodies of 12 civilians were retrieved from the rubble of buildings destroyed in airstrikes on four villages in southern Lebanon and many more were believed still buried. It was not clear when the victims were killed.
At least 532 Lebanese have been killed, including 461 civilians and 25 Lebanese soldiers and at least 46 Hezbollah guerrillas. The health minister says the toll could be as high as 750, including those still buried in rubble or missing. Fifty-four Israelis have died — 36 soldiers as well as 18 civilians killed in Hezbollah rocket attacks.
___
AP correspondent Hamza Hendawi in Bourj al-Mulouk, Lebanon contributed to this report.
Someone update this Al AP author / bozo with what's gone down in the last four hours.
An Israeli tank crosses the Israel-Lebanon border, west of Avivim, late night August 1, 2006. (Kai Pfaffenbach - ISRAEL/Reuters)
Rice gave Israel a time table, and Israel got off its ass. That is my speculation. Sometimes time tables are good. I am not convinced that Rice is the locus of all that ails Israel, vis a vis American policy. Just a thought.
Israeli special forces, with their llamas, wait to cross the Israel-Lebanon border west of Avivim, late night August 1, 2006. (Kai Pfaffenbach - ISRAEL/Reuters)
I thought llamas lived in Peru, and did not know they were a military asset. So much to learn, and so little time.
Do you actually believe Israel will abide by any "timetable" in a matter such as this? If so you really are naive.
Ya, I think they will. Cheers.
Israel captures guerrillas in Lebanon
HUSSEIN DAKROUB, Associated Press Writer
BEIRUT, Lebanon - Israel poured up to 10,000 armored troops into south Lebanon Tuesday, and separately dropped helicopter-borne commandos deep into the eastern Bekaa Valley where they raided a Hezbollah-run hospital and fought pitched battles with guerrillas, in a major escalation of the three-week-old war.
After the raid on the ancient city of Baalbek ended, the Israeli military said it had captured some guerrillas and hit others. The military statement said all its soldiers returned unharmed to their base, but gave no further details.
Does anyone remember a thing called "the Arab Street"? This was the concept that if any major moves were made by the US or Isreal, the entire Arab community in the Mideast would rise up and wage war on Isreal. Me? I'm just glad that the US is keeping out of it and letting Isreal clean house. Everybody over there knows what's what, even if they are afraid to say anything about it. It is the whiney Lib press that just doesn't get it.
It wasn't Condi, it was the spectre of a No Confidence Motion that she would have helped engineer. Netanyahu is all fire and brimstone.
Now that Condi's delaying action is getting stale, the French have thrown in another monkey wrench to help the IDF along.
Be Seeing You,
Chris
First, under the peace delusion the current Israeli leaders have been under, I think they were shocked by Hezbolla's prepared arms and infrastructure.
On point what I believe happened is that Olmert capitulated to Rice- and was met with a revolt- maybe revulsion is more correct- from the IDF.
Notice that the 24 hour cease fire was strangely not announced by Israel, it was announced by Rice. Only later to be confirmed by the Israeli Foreign Ministry.
Rice, on her own, is as much a friend to Israel as her mentor Brent Scowcroft, (see his piece in the Wash Post a couple of days ago that Israel should withdraw to the pre- 1967 lines). On the other hand, you listen to the President and you get the feeling his instincts are to let Israel do what it needs be done. It's his policy and reputation and he may understand that with Iraq and Afghanistan going over three years and counting, you can't limit Israel to three weeks.
Ironically, I don't believe Israel is under the most pressure right now to call a halt to the fighting, I think that would be the President. Pressure from Blair, Rice, others who believe in the Kerry "Global Test" theory of policy.
Do you come up with your fiction naturally or do you require help from hallucinogents?
Be Seeing You,
Chris
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.