Israeli strikes killed 41 people across Lebanon on Monday, including 10 civilians hit on a southern bridge, on the sixth day of a bombardment that has wreaked the heaviest destruction in Lebanon for over 20 years.
Rescuers also pulled nine bodies from the wreckage of a building in the southern city of Tyre that was bombed on Sunday, raising the death toll since Israel’s offensive began to above 200.
The fighting was triggered when Hezbollah, the guerrilla group which is backed by Syria and Iran and is part of Lebanon’s government, seized two Israeli soldiers and killed eight in a cross-border raid on northern Israel on Wednesday.
United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan said Security Council members would start work on a detailed agreement on deploying a multinational security force to south Lebanon.
But the United States gave only a guarded welcome to the proposal and Israel said it was too premature. “We’re at the stage where we want to be sure that Hezbollah is not deployed at our northern border,” government spokesperson Miri Eisin said.
A United Nations team sent to Lebanon to seek a solution to the fighting said it had made a promising start but that more diplomacy was needed before there could be any optimism.
Israeli planes hit coastal targets in the north and south, struck Beirut and damaged homes in the east belonging to members of Hizbollah, which fired more rockets deep into Israel.
Three Israeli tanks briefly crossed a few hundred metres into Lebanese territory on Monday afternoon, a UN source said, following a similar incursion overnight in which Israel said Hezbollah positions were destroyed.
Lebanese televisions stations showed burning debris falling over Beirut and said an Israeli plane had been shot down. Israeli Defence Minister Amir Peretz said no jet or helicopter had been lost but an unmanned drone may have been downed.
“I can’t believe they are doing all this for two captives. This is just an excuse,” said Ali Sharara (21) who fled his home in south Beirut to sleep in a city park for the last two nights.
Israeli Army Radio, quoting a top officer, said the country would enforce a one kilometre “free-fire” zone to bar Hezbollah from the border, without keeping troops on the ground.
Casualties mount
Israel’s campaign has killed 203 people, all but 13 of them civilians, and wounded more than 500.
Twenty-four Israelis have been killed in the fighting, including 12 civilians hit in rocket attacks.
Israeli raids on Monday destroyed two army posts on the northern Lebanese coast, killing at least six Lebanese soldiers, and damaged the homes of Hizbollah officials in eastern Lebanon. Eleven people were killed in more than 60 strikes.
Several blasts rocked Beirut at dawn and smoke rose from a blazing fuel depot. Civilian installations, petrol stations and factories elsewhere were also hit, security sources said.
UN emergency relief coordinator Jan Egeland said he feared a humanitarian crisis, citing the impact of power cuts and the bombing of water, sewage and health installations.
Beirut’s stock market remained closed after falling 14% last week due to the violence, which has also affected world currency markets and pushed oil prices to record levels.
The commander-in-chief of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, among Hezbollah’s closest allies, said Israel could end the conflict by agreeing to a prisoner swap proposed by the Lebanese group.
Israel is demanding the disarming of Hezbollah in line with UN resolutions — a task beyond the fragile Beirut government.
Hezbollah launched rocket attacks on Haifa on Sunday, killing eight people in its deadliest strike on Israel.
The group said it fired dozens more rockets at Haifa on Monday. A three-storey building in the city collapsed, wounding two people, medics said. Israel closed Haifa’s port.
France, the US, Britain and a host of other nations scrambled to evacuate their citizens from Lebanon.
Israel’s campaign in Lebanon followed the launch of its offensive in the Gaza Strip on June 28 to try to retrieve another captured soldier and halt Palestinian rocket fire.
Air strikes on Monday flattened the eight-storey Palestinian Foreign Ministry building in Gaza City and gutted the offices of a Hamas-led force in the northern Gaza Strip.
In the occupied West Bank, Palestinian gunmen ambushed a group of Israeli troops, killing one and wounding six others in the city of Nablus, witnesses and military sources said. — Reuters
(Additional reporting by Jerusalem bureau, Nadim Ladki, Alaa Shahine and Laila Bassam)