45 more killed in Israeli strikes on Lebanon; Hizbollah headquarters destroyed; Nasrallah says war has just begun
BEIRUT: At least 45 people were killed and 111 were hurt in Israel’s ongoing offensive on Lebanon Sunday, with five days of Israeli bombardments and airstrikes claiming a total of 148 lives.
The tally, compiled by AFP on the basis of reports from officials and hospital staff, also established that more than 355 people have been wounded since the start of the offensive. Almost all of those killed and injured since the beginning of the Israeli assault on Wednesday were civilians.
A family of five Lebanese Canadians visiting Lebanon on vacation were among those killed when Israeli jets repeatedly bombed the southern village of Aitarun, close to the border with Israel, police said.
Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay said eight Canadians were killed. Nineteen civilians died in an Israeli attack on a building housing a military office and transmitter in the southern port town of Tyre, hospital sources said. They had been seeking shelter after fleeing Israeli raids on their home villages.
Twenty-four Israelis have been killed in the violence — 12 civilians who have died in Hizbollah rocket attacks, and 12 servicemen. Also, Hizbollah fired a relentless barrage of rockets into the northern Israeli city of Haifa on Sunday, killing eight people at a train station and wounding seven others in a dramatic escalation of a five-day-old conflict that has shattered Mideast peace.
Israeli warplanes struck late on Sunday the edge of a runway at the Beirut international airport, a Lebanese army official told AFP. The fighter-bombers staged eight consecutive raids in less than 15 minutes, firing 10 missiles on a runway at the airport, said the official. There was no word on casualties.
Two Marine Corps helicopters evacuated 21 Americans from Lebanon on Sunday, flying from the embassy’s fortified grounds on a hilltop in Beirut suburb bound for Cyprus. Hizbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah vowed on Sunday an unrestrained campaign against Israel. “We will use all means,” Hizbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah said in an address on Lebanese television. “As long as the enemy has no limits, we will have no limits.” “Surprises are coming. Our forces are still intact, and we are the ones who are choosing the time and the place” for the attacks, he warned.
Nasrallah denies Iranian troops are helping his guerrillas fight Israel. He said confrontation with Israel was just beginning after the bombardment of the Israeli city of Haifa. “We will continue. We still have a lot more and we are just at the beginning,” he said.
Hizbollah’s firing of at least 20 rockets at Haifa came after Israel unleashed its fiercest bombardment yet of the Lebanese capital, starting after midnight Saturday. The attack reduced Beirut apartment buildings to rubble and knocked out electricity in many areas of the city. Within two hours of the 8am Haifa attack, Israel warplanes retaliated by bombarding the Hizbollah headquarters in south Beirut, sending a thick smoke cloud over the city.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said: “Nothing will deter us, whatever far-reaching ramifications regarding our relations on the northern border and in the region there may be.” Other rockets hit the city’s major oil refinery, gas storage tanks and a major street during the busy morning rush hour.
Israeli authorities warned all residents in the central city of Tel Aviv and north to be on heightened alert, reflecting the longer range of the missile attacks. “In two or three hours we are going to attack the south of Lebanon heavily,” said Maj-Gen Udi Adam, the head of Israel’s northern command.
An Indian soldier who is part of the UN peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon was wounded on Sunday when two Israeli tank shells hit his position in the border village of Houla, a UN spokesman said.
Israel is not ruling out a ground offensive in Lebanon, army chief of staff Dan Halutz said on Sunday. Lebanon’s government said on Sunday that Italy has relayed Israeli conditions to stop its assault on Lebanon: release the two captured Israeli soldiers and pull Hizbollah back from the Israeli border.
Syria warned on Sunday it would respond directly and by all means necessary to any Israeli attack on its territory, in its first official reaction to Israel’s offensive on neighbouring Lebanon. The warning coincided with a similar threat by Damascus’s key ally Iran, and came amid rising fears that the Middle East is being dragged deeper into the spiralling conflict sparked by the capture of Israeli soldiers by Hizbollah fighters in Lebanon and militants linked to Hamas in Gaza. “Any Israeli attack against Syria will provoke an unlimited, direct and firm response using all means necessary,” Information Minister Mohsen Bilal told the official SANA news agency.
BEIRUT: At least 45 people were killed and 111 were hurt in Israel’s ongoing offensive on Lebanon Sunday, with five days of Israeli bombardments and airstrikes claiming a total of 148 lives.
The tally, compiled by AFP on the basis of reports from officials and hospital staff, also established that more than 355 people have been wounded since the start of the offensive. Almost all of those killed and injured since the beginning of the Israeli assault on Wednesday were civilians.
A family of five Lebanese Canadians visiting Lebanon on vacation were among those killed when Israeli jets repeatedly bombed the southern village of Aitarun, close to the border with Israel, police said.
Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay said eight Canadians were killed. Nineteen civilians died in an Israeli attack on a building housing a military office and transmitter in the southern port town of Tyre, hospital sources said. They had been seeking shelter after fleeing Israeli raids on their home villages.
Twenty-four Israelis have been killed in the violence — 12 civilians who have died in Hizbollah rocket attacks, and 12 servicemen. Also, Hizbollah fired a relentless barrage of rockets into the northern Israeli city of Haifa on Sunday, killing eight people at a train station and wounding seven others in a dramatic escalation of a five-day-old conflict that has shattered Mideast peace.
Israeli warplanes struck late on Sunday the edge of a runway at the Beirut international airport, a Lebanese army official told AFP. The fighter-bombers staged eight consecutive raids in less than 15 minutes, firing 10 missiles on a runway at the airport, said the official. There was no word on casualties.
Two Marine Corps helicopters evacuated 21 Americans from Lebanon on Sunday, flying from the embassy’s fortified grounds on a hilltop in Beirut suburb bound for Cyprus. Hizbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah vowed on Sunday an unrestrained campaign against Israel. “We will use all means,” Hizbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah said in an address on Lebanese television. “As long as the enemy has no limits, we will have no limits.” “Surprises are coming. Our forces are still intact, and we are the ones who are choosing the time and the place” for the attacks, he warned.
Nasrallah denies Iranian troops are helping his guerrillas fight Israel. He said confrontation with Israel was just beginning after the bombardment of the Israeli city of Haifa. “We will continue. We still have a lot more and we are just at the beginning,” he said.
Hizbollah’s firing of at least 20 rockets at Haifa came after Israel unleashed its fiercest bombardment yet of the Lebanese capital, starting after midnight Saturday. The attack reduced Beirut apartment buildings to rubble and knocked out electricity in many areas of the city. Within two hours of the 8am Haifa attack, Israel warplanes retaliated by bombarding the Hizbollah headquarters in south Beirut, sending a thick smoke cloud over the city.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said: “Nothing will deter us, whatever far-reaching ramifications regarding our relations on the northern border and in the region there may be.” Other rockets hit the city’s major oil refinery, gas storage tanks and a major street during the busy morning rush hour.
Israeli authorities warned all residents in the central city of Tel Aviv and north to be on heightened alert, reflecting the longer range of the missile attacks. “In two or three hours we are going to attack the south of Lebanon heavily,” said Maj-Gen Udi Adam, the head of Israel’s northern command.
An Indian soldier who is part of the UN peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon was wounded on Sunday when two Israeli tank shells hit his position in the border village of Houla, a UN spokesman said.
Israel is not ruling out a ground offensive in Lebanon, army chief of staff Dan Halutz said on Sunday. Lebanon’s government said on Sunday that Italy has relayed Israeli conditions to stop its assault on Lebanon: release the two captured Israeli soldiers and pull Hizbollah back from the Israeli border.
Syria warned on Sunday it would respond directly and by all means necessary to any Israeli attack on its territory, in its first official reaction to Israel’s offensive on neighbouring Lebanon. The warning coincided with a similar threat by Damascus’s key ally Iran, and came amid rising fears that the Middle East is being dragged deeper into the spiralling conflict sparked by the capture of Israeli soldiers by Hizbollah fighters in Lebanon and militants linked to Hamas in Gaza. “Any Israeli attack against Syria will provoke an unlimited, direct and firm response using all means necessary,” Information Minister Mohsen Bilal told the official SANA news agency.
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