Israel struck Beirut airport and blockaded Lebanese ports on Thursday, intensifying reprisals that have killed 53 civilians since Lebanese Hezbollah fighters seized two Israeli soldiers and killed eight a day earlier.
Hezbollah retaliated for Israeli ”massacres” by firing at least 70 rockets at Nahariya in northern Israel. A civilian was killed and at least 42 were wounded, Israeli medics said.
The violence was the worst between Israel and Lebanon since 1996 when Israeli troops still occupied part of the south. It coincided with a major Israeli offensive into the Gaza Strip to retrieve a captured soldier and halt Palestinian rocket fire.
Despite the flare-up in Lebanon, Israel signalled no let-up in its Gaza assault, mounting an air strike that destroyed the office of Palestinian Foreign Minister Mahmoud al-Zahar. At least 24 Palestinians were killed in Gaza on Wednesday.
Israeli aircraft bombed runways at Beirut’s Rafik al-Hariri International airport, forcing flights to divert to Cyprus.
An Israeli military spokesperson announced a naval blockade of Lebanese ports, saying they were used to transfer ”terrorists and weapons to the terror organisations operating in Lebanon”.
Dawn air strikes in south Lebanon earlier killed at least 44 civilians, including more than 15 children, and wounded 100 people, security sources said. Ten members of a family were killed in Dweir village and seven family members died in Baflay.
A Lebanese army soldier was also killed. Israeli air strikes on Wednesday killed two civilians and a Hezbollah fighter.
Disproportionate act of war
France criticised Israel’s campaign in Lebanon, including the attack on the airport, as ”a disproportionate act of war”.
Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran and Syria, said it had fired 60 rockets at Nahariya ”in response to the massacres of civilians in the south and assaults on infrastructure”.
Israel’s Magen David Adom ambulance service said a 40-year-old woman was killed when a rocket hit her house.
The violence rattled financial markets in Israel and Lebanon with investors worried that it might worsen, or spread to Syria.
The Israeli shekel lost as much as 2% against the dollar in early trade. Israeli shares also opened more than 3% down after dropping more than 4% on Wednesday.
Pressure on the Lebanese pound increased. Beirut stocks slumped in panic selling, with Lebanon’s biggest company Solidere shedding 15%, the maximum permitted.
Two hours after the airport raid, an Israeli helicopter fired a missile at the headquarters of Hezbollah’s al-Manar TV in the Beirut suburb of Haret Hreik, wounding six people.
One of the wounded was an al-Manar employee, the station’s director said. The building, in a Shi’ite neighbourhood where Hezbollah leaders also have offices, was slightly damaged.
Israeli aircraft later attacked an al-Manar transmission tower south of Baalbek in eastern Lebanon, killing one person and wounding four, witnesses said.
Israel had promised a ”very painful” response after Hezbollah seized two soldiers and killed eight on Wednesday.
The Israeli assault will increase domestic pressure on Hezbollah, which has refused to disarm in line with a 2004 United Nations resolution, and add to international calls on the Lebanese government, led by an anti-Syrian coalition, to act.
”Either Hezbollah are stupid, or they don’t care,” said Michael Karam, editor of a Lebanese business magazine. ”Now we’ve got no airport, so no tourism and no prosperity.”
The Hezbollah attack, which Israel blames on Lebanon, tore up tacit understandings that had limited border violence for six years since Israeli troops left the south.
”The Lebanese government has now become a buffer squeezed between Israel and Hezbollah,” said Amal Saad Ghorayeb, a Lebanese academic and author of a book on Hezbollah.
Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora has said his government did not endorse the Hezbollah attack.
Apart from the Israeli attack on the Foreign Ministry building in Gaza, a separate air strike near Deir el-Balah in the central Gaza Strip killed an Islamic Jihad militant and wounded another gunman, Palestinian security officials said.
Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said the two soldiers had been seized to force Israel to release prisoners.
Israel, which traded prisoners with Hezbollah in 2004, insisted it would discuss no such swap.
The White House condemned the Hezbollah attack and blamed Syria and Iran. — Reuters