Israeli warplanes bombed Beirut’s international airport before dawn on Thursday and killed at least 27 Lebanese civilians in a series of raids after Israel vowed a harsh response to the killing and capture of its soldiers by Hezbollah guerrillas.
Fighter jets swooped in on the airport, firing missiles on two runways, forcing the divertion of flights to neighbouring Cyprus and the closure of the newly renovated airport.
Lebanese police said 27 civilians, including 10 children, were also killed in a wave of Israeli attacks on the south on Thursday after the Hezbollah action that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert branded an ”act of war”.
Hezbollah also claimed to have fired a volley of rockets on northern Israel early on Thursday. Israel said one woman was killed.
The killing of eight soldiers and the capture of another two by Hezbollah militants in fighting on the volatile Israel-Lebanon border on Wednesday opened up a dangerous new front in the Middle East conflict.
Israeli warplanes also bombed the Palestinian Foreign Ministry in the Gaza Strip overnight in the latest offensive over the seizure of an Israeli soldier by Palestinian militants three weeks ago.
A total of 70 Palestinians have been killed in the military onslaught against Gaza, which the United Nations has warned is causing a humanitarian crisis in one of the most densely populated areas on Earth.
World leaders have issued urgent appeals for restraint, although Israel’s top ally, the United States, held Syria and Iran responsible for the fighting on the Lebanese-Israeli border, the deadliest since Israel ended its 22-year occupation of south Lebanon six years ago.
Hezbollah, or the Party of God, whose militia was instrumental in forcing Israeli troops out of Lebanon in May 2000, said it was demanding the release of Arab prisoners in return for the soldiers.
”They will only return home through indirect negotiations and an exchange of prisoners,” Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah said, saying the abduction was aimed at drawing international attention to the plight of ”thousands of Lebanese, Palestinian and Arab detainees”.
But Olmert insisted there would be no negotiations.
”This was an act of war without any provocation on the sovereign territory … of the state of Israel,” said Olmert, facing the most serious test of his leadership since his government took office in May.
On Wednesday, Israeli fighter jets, gunboats and artillery pounded Lebanon, hitting Hezbollah targets and about 10 bridges, cutting off the highway linking Beirut to the south.
After an emergency meeting, the Israeli Cabinet gave the green light to unspecified retaliatory action against Lebanon, which has been mired in its own political crisis since the murder of ex-premier Rafiq Hariri in 2005 and is still rebuilding after the devastating 1975-1990 civil war.
”Israel must respond with the necessary severity to this act of aggression … Israel will respond aggressively and harshly to those who carried out, and are responsible for, today’s [Wednesday] action,” a Cabinet statement said.
Army chief Dan Halutz vowed on Israeli television to ”take Lebanon back 20 years”.
Israel has already called up a rapid-reaction force of 6,000 troops headed for the northern border, where many residents were heading for bunkers to escape mortars and Katyusha rockets fired by Hezbollah at the Jewish state.
The Lebanese government — which includes a Hezbollah minister — denied any involvement in the Hezbollah action and demanded an urgent United Nations Security Council meeting.
Prime Minister Fuad Siniora also called up a host of world leaders ”to ask them to help Lebanon in the face of the aggression and in order to contain the situation”.
Yemen also called for an emergency meeting of the 22-member Arab League.
The White House, which considers Hezbollah a terrorist outfit, condemned the capture of the soldiers and pointed the finger at Israel’s two main foes, Iran and Syria, which both bankroll the fundamentalist Shi’ite movement.
Washington also defended Israel’s ground incursion into Lebanon — the first since the 2000 pull-out, saying its chief Middle East ally was entitled to defend itself against ”terrorist” attacks.
UN chief Kofi Annan urged all sides to show restraint and to protect civilians.
Lebanese police said two civilians and a soldier were killed and 26 people wounded in Israeli reprisal attacks.
Hezbollah later claimed a pair of mortar attacks on the army’s headquarters along the Lebanese border, but the military said no one was injured.
News of the captured soldiers was greeted with celebratory gunfire across the southern suburbs of Beirut — a Hezbollah stronghold — while some residents handed out candy to passing motorists .
”Long live Hezbollah, death to Israel,” chanted youths.
The governing Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, whose military wing is one of three groups holding another soldier captive in Gaza, said the latest abductions showed the ”weakness of the Israeli army.”
Israel has been on high alert for possible retaliation following its threats to kill Hamas leaders in Damascus and since it sent warplanes over a Syrian presidential palace in a show of force last month.
The return of Israeli troops to Gaza 10 months after the army ended a 38-year-occupation has already evoked painful memories of its disastrous full-scale invasion of Lebanon in 1982 where soldiers became bogged down in a deadly quagmire before finally leaving.
Wednesday’s flare-up on the northern border came shortly after Israel pressed on with its offensive in Gaza, striking the Palestinian foreign ministry overnight and killing 23 people, including nine members of the same family in an air strike on the home of a Hamas leader.
Israel has launched wave after wave of air strikes in Gaza in a bid to secure the release of an Israeli corporal and stop rocket attacks.
Gilad Shalit was captured in an attack by three groups including the armed wing of Hamas — which is branded a terrorist movement by Israel and the West.
The groups have demanded the release of 1 000 Palestinian, Arab, Muslim and other prisoners but Israel has refused to negotiate.
The latest abductions and killings of Israeli soldiers are likely to raise embarrassing questions about the Jewish state’s military, which considers itself one of the strongest in the world.
In January 2004, Israel and Hezbollah carried out a swap through German mediation that saw hundreds of Arab detainees released, the return of the bodies of three soldiers, and the freeing of an Israeli businessman. – AFP
