Israel says 1st phase of offensive completed

updated 6:58 p.m. ET Aug. 4, 2006

BEIRUT, Lebanon - Israel and Hezbollah fought bloody ground battles and exchanged fierce airstrikes Friday — including bombing raids that severed Lebanon’s last major supply link with Syria and the outside world, and the guerrillas’ deepest rocket strike inside Israel to date.

After days of desultory diplomacy, Washington said it was near agreement with France on a U.N. cease-fire resolution, possibly by early next week. But Israel and Hezbollah showed no signs of holding their fire.

Israeli aircraft on a mission to destroy weapons caches hit a refrigerated warehouse where farm workers were loading fruit, killing at least 28 near the Lebanon-Syria border. And three Hezbollah rockets landed near Hadera, 50 miles south of the Israel-Lebanon border; 188 rockets rained on other Israeli towns, killing four civilians, three of them Arabs.

Given the determination of both Hezbollah and Israel to look victorious when the conflict finally ends, the worst of the fighting may still lie ahead with the militant Shiite guerrilla fighters perhaps making good on their threat to rocket Tel Aviv and Israel launching an all-out ground offensive, pushing northward to the Litani River.

Israeli military officials said Friday they completed the first phase of the offensive, securing a 4-mile buffer zone in south Lebanon, though pockets of Hezbollah resistance remained.

‘The whole mission’
Defense Minister Amir Peretz has told top army officers to begin preparing for a push to the Litani, about 20 miles north of the border — a move that would require Cabinet approval. Peretz vowed his forces would complete “the whole mission” of driving guerrilla fighters out of missile range, a defiant response to the Hezbollah leader’s threat to launch missiles into Israel’s largest city.

Israeli airstrikes destroyed four key bridges after dawn, severing Beirut’s final major connection to Syria and raising the threat of severe shortages of food, gasoline and medicines within days.

The attack in the Christian heartland just north of Beirut killed four civilians and a Lebanese soldier.

Israel said it targeted the bridges to stop the flow of weapons to Hezbollah from Iran through Syria.

Those weapons include not only rockets, but sophisticated anti-tank missiles said to be responsible for most of the 44 Israeli soldiers killed in more than three weeks of fighting.

However, aid workers said the destroyed highway was a vital conduit for much-needed food and supplies, with Christiane Berthiaume of the World Food Program calling it Lebanon’s “umbilical cord.”

“This (road) has been the only way for us to bring in aid. We really need to find other ways to bring relief in,” she said in Geneva, Switzerland.

More than 50 buried in rubble
Israeli airstrikes flattened two southern Lebanese houses Friday and more than 50 people were buried in the rubble, security officials and the state news agency said. Israel denied attacking the villages. The number of dead was not immediately known.

One attack flattened a building in Aita al-Shaab, a mile inside Lebanon, Lebanon’s National News Agency reported. A large number of civilians were inside at the time, but the exact number was unknown, it said.

Lebanese security officials said the number of occupants was around 50, and that they were still buried in the rubble there.

Warplanes also hit Taibeh, about 3 miles from the Israeli border, destroying a house where 17 people had taken refuge, the news agency reported. It said an unknown number of people were killed, and several others were wounded.

But Israeli army spokesman Capt. Jacob Dallal said the Israeli air force had not hit the two areas. “The air force had no targets in those villages,” he said.

The Lebanese Red Cross was unable to reach the area, security officials said.

The two border villages are at the heart of south Lebanon’s war zone, with fierce ground battles being waged in and around them — making it difficult for rescuers or reporters to document any attacks.

MORE FROM MIDEAST & N. AFRICA

Mideast & N. Africa Section Front

Iranian police break up defiant protests Clerics pose challenge to Iran leader Hamas tries to detain woman walking with man Iran president declares new era Prosecutors investigate UAE sheik over torture Mideast & N. Africa Section Front   Add Mideast & N. Africa headlines to your news reader: