United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called for an urgent ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah but the guerrilla group’s leader on Monday vowed no let-up in missile attacks against the Jewish state.
Israeli warplanes pounded south Lebanon early on Monday after Hezbollah missiles hit northern Israel over the weekend.
Hezbollah’s leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said in remarks published on Monday that Israeli attacks would not halt the guerrilla group’s rocket fire.
On a mission to avert full-scale war in the Middle East, Rice said there was an ”urgent” need for a ceasefire in southern Lebanon but conditions had to be right.
Speaking to reporters late on Sunday as she flew to the Middle East, Rice said she also wanted to ease the humanitarian crisis in Lebanon, which has been pounded by nearly two weeks of fighting.
”It is very important to establish conditions under which a ceasefire can take place. We believe that a ceasefire is urgent, Rice said before a re-fuelling stop in Shannon, Ireland.
”It is important to have conditions that will make it also sustainable,” Rice said.
The United States has resisted calls for an immediate ceasefire, saying any cessation of hostilities must address the root causes of the conflict, which Washington blames on Hezbollah and its allies, Syria and Iran.
Israel has said it would to back a temporary international force in southern Lebanon to ensure Hezbollah is removed from the border and to take control of Lebanon’s border crossing with Syria.
”Any Israeli incursion will not have political results unless it achieves any of the announced goals, most importantly to stop the bombardment of Zionist settlements … and I assure you that this will goal will not be achieved,” Nasrallah told Lebanon’s As-Safir daily newspaper.
Civilians have taken the brunt of the 12-day-old conflict that has cost 369 lives in Lebanon and 37 in Israel, prompting United Nations emergency relief coordinator Jan Egeland to demand a halt to the violence to allow aid to reach the hardest-hit areas.
South Lebanon pounded
Israeli warplanes pounded south Lebanon in the early hours of Monday, wounding six people, including one child, at a Palestinian refugee camp in the port city of Tyre.
The Israeli army said it had seized two Hezbollah guerrillas during fighting in the village of Maroun al-Ras in southern Lebanon, believed to be the first prisoners taken in Lebanon since the outbreak of violence following Hezbollah’s July 12 capture of two Israeli soldiers.
The cross-border raid prompted Israel to launch a military campaign that also targeted civilian installations across Lebanon. It coincided with an offensive in the Palestinian territories to retrieve another soldier captured on June 25.
Hezbollah has said it wants to exchange the two soldiers with Lebanese and Arab prisoners in Israeli jails. And Nasrallah, whose whereabouts are unknown, said the group would not object if the Beirut government were to negotiate the swap.
During her visit, Rice is set to meet Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, before discussing the Lebanon crisis with European and Arab officials meeting in Rome on Wednesday.
Saudi Arabia, a key US ally, pressed US President George Bush to work for a ceasefire and the start of a prisoner exchange between Hezbollah and Israel.
Olmert said the proposed multinational force would assist the Lebanese army, and would be charged with disarming Hezbollah in line with UN Security Council resolution 1559.
It would be hard to deploy any such force in the mainly Shi’ite Muslim south without the consent of Hezbollah, which says it will keep its weapons.
UN peacekeepers have patrolled the south since Israel first invaded Lebanon in 1978, but their mission to help restore Lebanese government authority in the area remains unfulfilled.
Israeli air raids on Sunday killed nine civilians and wounded 100, many of them in Tyre.
Two people were killed and 20 wounded when Hezbollah rockets hit houses and vehicles in Haifa, Israel’s third largest city. About 50 people were wounded in similar attacks in at least 10 other towns across northern Israel.
Israel has called up thousands of reserve soldiers and has assembled troops and tanks on its northern border, but the army said its chief, Lieutenant-General Dan Halutz, had not decided whether to launch a major ground incursion. – Reuters