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Rockets Hit Israeli City of Haifa    [

    Israel Says Hundreds of Targets Hit in Lebanon
    MSNBC News Services

    Thursday 13 July 2006

Official warns Hezbollah sending captured soldiers to Iran; Tehran denies it.

    Beirut, Lebanon - Israel has hit hundreds of targets in Lebanon as part of its effort to force the release of two soldiers captured by Hezbollah guerrillas, a top Israeli general said Thursday.

    Meantime, an Israeli foreign ministry spokesman said the country has information that the Lebanese guerrillas who captured the two Israeli soldiers are trying to transfer them to Iran.

    "We have concerns that they could be taken out of Lebanon to Iran. Those concerns have a basis," said Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev. He did not disclose the source of his information.

    The guerrillas insisted they would only release the soldiers in exchange for Israel freeing Arab prisoners.

    Iran's Foreign Ministry denied the allegations.

    "I strongly deny such reports," Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said. "Because of its desperation and increasing isolation in the world and because of the tension and crisis created inside Israel, it is now talking absurdities."

    'Rid Ourselves of This Threat'

    Speaking to reporters, Maj. Gen. Udi Adam, the chief of Israel's northern command, said Israel was targeting infrastructure in Lebanon that held rockets and other arsenals belong to Hezbollah.

    Hezbollah guerrillas launched more than 80 rockets and mortars into Israel on Thursday.

    "I imagine over time that we will be able to rid ourselves of this threat entirely," he said.

    He also said the army was not ruling out sending ground troops into Lebanon. Israel maintains Hezbollah is financed and equipped by Iran, with backing by Syria.

    Israel intensified its attacks against Lebanon throughout the day Thursday, blasting Beirut's airport and two Lebanese army air bases near the Syrian border, and imposing a naval blockade. More than 50 people have died in the violence.

    Airbases Hit

    Military jets attacked runways at the Rayak air base in the eastern Bekaa Valley, police said, and at the Qoleiat air base near the Syrian border in the north. Rayak, four miles west of the Syrian border, is home to the country's main military air base and is military headquarters in eastern Lebanon.

    Because Lebanon's army has no operational fixed-wing aircraft and only operates helicopters - which can take off or land anywhere - the attacks appeared to be mostly symbolic.

    Earlier, Israel imposed a naval blockade on the country and pounded its only international airport and the Hezbollah TV station. It's Israel's heaviest air campaign against Lebanon for 24 years. Nearly three dozen civilians were killed, officials said.

    "We should not consider this a matter of days. This is going to be long," Brigadier-General Amir Eshel, deputy chief of air force staff, told Reuters. "This blockade will last as long as the conflict goes on."

    'Nothing Is Safe'

    In a separate warning, the Israeli army chief said Thursday that "nothing is safe" in Lebanon and Israel's air force is prepared to strike anywhere in the country, including the capital of Beirut, if the Lebanese government fails to rein in Hezbollah guerrillas.

    "We are not at war, but we are in a very high volume crisis, and we have an intention to put an end to the situation here along the northern border," Brig. Gen. Dan Halutz said in Jerusalem.

    Hezbollah responded, threatening to attack the major Israeli port city of Haifa with rockets if Beirut and its southern suburbs are attacked.

    The airport, located in the Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs of Beirut, was closed after the attacks and flights were diverted to nearby Cyprus. It was the first time since Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon and occupation of Beirut that the airport was hit by Israel.

    Israel also fired a missile at the building housing the studios of Hezbollah's Al-Manar TV in the southern suburbs of Beirut on Thursday morning, the channel's press officer Ibrahim Farhat told The Associated Press. One person was hurt, but the station continued to broadcast.

    Rockets Strike Northern Israel

    Overnight Israeli attacks in southern Lebanon killed 35 civilians and wounded dozens more, Lebanese security officials said. A family of 10 and another family of seven were killed in their homes in the village of Dweir near Nabatiyeh, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to speak to the press.

    Later Thursday, Lebanese guerrillas fired volleys of rockets at northern Israel, killing an Israeli woman in her home in the border town of Nahariya, officials said. Five people were wounded.

    Three rockets were also fired at the northern Israeli town of Safed, wounding seven people, one seriously, witnesses and medics said. The rockets hit an immigrants' absorption center and a college. Another fell near a gas station.

    Safed had not been targeted by rockets since the 1990s.

    Thousands of civilians spent Wednesday night in underground shelters.

    Eshel said the campaign was likely Israel's largest ever in Lebanon, measured in number of targets hit in one night and the complexity of the strikes. The last major military offensive against Lebanon was in 1996 when about 150 Lebanese civilians were killed.

    On Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert called the Hezbollah raid an "act of war" by Lebanon and threatened "very, very, very painful" retaliation. The Cabinet, meeting in the wake of the military's highest daily death toll in four years, decided to continue the army operation and call on the international community to disarm Hezbollah, according to participants.

    Beirut Suburbs Possible Target

    Senior Israeli military officials said Israel warned the Lebanese government that it plans to strike offices and homes of Hezbollah leaders in the southern suburbs of Beirut.

    Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz also demanded that Lebanese army forces be deployed along the border, saying Israel would not allow Hezbollah guerrillas to reoccupy its positions there. Lebanon has long refused to do this, saying that it is not in business of protecting Israel's northern border.

    The Lebanese government said Wednesday that it had not known of the Hezbollah operation, did not condone it and bore no responsibility for it. The Lebanese Cabinet, which includes two Hezbollah ministers, urged the U.N. Security Council to intervene.

    Hezbollah's brazen cross-border raid Wednesday opened a second front for the Israeli army. The army launched an incursion into the Gaza Strip more than two weeks ago to search for another Israeli soldier who was captured by Hamas-linked militants.

    Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah on Wednesday offered to trade the two captured Israeli soldiers for Arab prisoners, and warned Israel that his guerrillas would fight if attacked. The group says it has over 10,000 rockets and has in the past struck northern Israeli communities in retaliation for attacks against Lebanese civilians.

    Israel and Lebanon have a history of conflict, punctuated by a full-scale Israeli invasion in 1982, and its 18-year occupation of a buffer zone in southern Lebanon that was intended to prevent attacks on Israel.

    Abbas: 'Serious Deterioration'

    Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said Israel's incursion into Lebanon has raised the specter of a large-scale Middle East war and urged world powers to intervene "to stop this serious deterioration."

    "The expansion of the military action to the neighbor, Lebanon, is raising our fears of a new regional war," Abbas said after meeting Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

    The escalation of violence in the Middle East pushed crude oil prices to a new intraday record of $75.88 a barrel.

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    The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

 

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    Rockets Hit Israeli City of Haifa
    BBC News

    Thursday 13 July 2006

At least one rocket has struck the northern Israeli port city of Haifa, hours after a threat by the militant Lebanese group Hezbollah.

    Hezbollah denied firing any rockets. There were no immediate reports of injuries or damage.

    Haifa, Israel's third largest city, is more than 30km (18 miles) from the Lebanese border and was thought to be out of Hezbollah's range.

    Israel has been carrying out ground, sea and air raids on Lebanon.

    It imposed the blockade following the capture of two of its soldiers by Hezbollah militants on Wednesday.

    Israeli warships have blocked Lebanese ports, and Beirut international airport was closed after Israeli bombing.

    About 50 Lebanese people, mostly civilians, have been killed in the raids.

    Hezbollah had said it would attack Haifa if Israeli planes bombed Beirut.

    It has fired dozens of rockets into Israel in the past two days, but none have so far gone further than 20km (12 miles) inside the country.

    At least one Israeli has died in the attacks and dozens have been injured.

    The Israeli ambassador in Washington, Danny Ayalon, described the Haifa incident as a "major escalation" of the crisis, which began with the soldiers' capture.