Israel will continue its offensive against Hezbollah guerrillas until two soldiers are freed and rocket strikes end, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Tuesday told United Nations envoys trying to broker a ceasefire.
Israeli jets hit Lebanese army bases and flattened homes in a deadly new blitz of air strikes on Tuesday, the seventh day of an assault that has killed at least 240 people and sent tens of thousands of people fleeing for their lives.
Israel also rejected calls for a ceasefire.
”Israel will continue the battle against Hezbollah and will continue to strike targets belonging to the group until it obtains the release of its captured soldiers and restores the security of Israeli citizens,” Olmert was quoted as saying in a statement following talks with the UN team.
Israel’s army also said on Tuesday that Hezbollah was smuggling weapons from Syria, but added it did not regard Syria as a target for attack.
”In the last few days, the smuggling of weapons from Syria to Lebanon has continued,” Major General Gadi Eisenkot of the Israeli army command told a news conference.
”We don’t see Syria or the Lebanese army as a target but at the same time we see in the picture the smuggling of weapons from Syria to Lebanon to be used in attacks against Israeli civilians …”
Meanwhile, helicopters, ferries and cruise liners were being commandeered to pick up foreign nationals trapped in the fighting between Israel and Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas, in one of the biggest evacuations since World War II.
Despite a proposal for an international force to try to halt the deadliest cross-border violence in decades and prevent an all-out regional war, the UN has so far failed to agree on a call for a ceasefire.
Lebanon’s grim body count continued to mount, with 11 soldiers and at least four civilians killed and several families trapped and feared dead under the rubble of houses pulverised by Israeli missiles.
Combat jets also bombarded the Beirut-Damascus highway, cutting off the main land route used by people trying to flee, and blocking a convoy of ambulances.
Ground offensive
Israel said it has not ruled out a massive ground offensive on its northern neighbour in a bid to crush the Hezbollah militia, which it has branded part of an ”axis of terror”, along with arch-enemies Tehran and Damascus and the Palestinian militant group Hamas.
In a tit-for-tat cycle of violence, Hezbollah has kept up a relentless barrage of rocket fire on northern Israel that has killed 12 civilians and wounded dozens more in a week.
A UN team was in Jerusalem on Tuesday on the latest leg of a mission to try to work out a truce while UN Secretary General Kofi Annan fleshed out plans for an international force he said could help Beirut get a grip on Hezbollah, which effectively controls southern Lebanon.
Israel launched the all-out assault against Lebanon following Hezbollah’s capture of two soldiers last Wednesday, battering the militant group’s power base in Beirut’s southern suburbs and hitting targets across the country.
The international airport has been knocked out, ports bombed, bridges destroyed, power stations set ablaze and houses turned to rubble in scenes reminiscent of the country’s devastating 1975 to 1990 civil war.
Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora, who has described his country as a disaster zone, issued a new appeal for a ceasefire, accusing Israel of trying to ”send Lebanon back 50 years”.
Israel, which has sent ground troops back into Lebanon for the first time since it ended its occupation in May 2000, warned that its offensive could last at least another week — emboldened by strong public support at home.
”We will strike anyone who would strike at us and any terrorist infrastructure, until Hezbollah and Hamas cease attacking us,” Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said, declaring that Israel was facing a ”moment of truth”.
Tens of thousands of terrified foreigners and Lebanese are trying to flee the fighting, which has left a trail of devastation across many parts of Lebanon, particularly the south of the country and the southern suburbs of Beirut, the Hezbollah power base.
The humanitarian situation in Lebanon is also ”catastrophic” as 500 000 people have been displaced by the Israeli onslaught on the country, the representative of the United Nations Children’s Fund in Beirut, Roberto Laurenti, told Agence France-Presse on Tuesday.
”The situation is both alarming and catastrophic. There are about 500 000 people displaced already,” he said.
With Beirut out of action since Thursday, many foreigners were taking the land route to Syria while others are waiting to be brought out by ship or helicopter.
‘Biggest evacuation since Dunkirk’
Israel has slapped an air and sea blockade around Lebanon but has said it will coordinate to allow foreign nationals to leave.
In the first mass evacuations by sea, two boatloads arrived in Cyprus, which lies just 160km across the Mediterranean sea from Lebanon.
British Foreign Office minister Kim Howells said the Royal Navy could be faced with ”the biggest evacuation since Dunkirk” — when about 330 000 soldiers were evacuated by sea from France in 1940 — while the United States was preparing to help potentially thousands of nationals flee.
In attacks Tuesday, 11 members of Lebanon’s armed forces — which Israel is demanding takes back control of southern Lebanon from Hezbollah — were killed in a strike on a military base east of Beirut.
A family of at least five people was also buried under the rubble of a house that collapsed after a raid on the village of Qana, whose name is etched in Lebanon’s memory after the massacre of more than 100 civilians at a UN base there by Israeli shelling.
The overall toll now stands at least 240, including 212 civilians and 23 soldiers, according to medics and police. More than 500 people have been wounded.
”I was at work at the time of the Israeli bombardments, and I went back home to find it in ashes,” said one elderly woman who has fled her home in Beirut’s southern suburbs. ”I was told to leave the area quickly, and for seven days now I don’t know if my sons are under the rubble or safe somewhere.”
As the European Union and the US prepared to send top-level envoys to the region, Annan outlined plans for an international force for Lebanon that he expected be ”considerably larger” than the current 2 000-strong UN peacekeeping force.
But Israel — which has always rejected the deployment of foreign forces in its conflict with the Palestinians — said it was ”too early” to discuss such a possibility.
Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, in talks with UN officials, said Hezbollah should be dismantled and stop being armed by Syria and Iran, reiterating that the two soldiers snatched by its fighters must be released without conditions.
Terje Roed-Larsen, a member of the UN team, said the UN was ”working very hard” to find a resolution to the conflict.
”The UN delegation presented specific and concrete ideas,” he said. ”Both parties agree it is necessary to have a political framework to reach a ceasefire.”
The US State Department said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will also travel to the region, while EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana is also preparing for a trip.
”What … everybody wants to see is a cessation of violence,” said State Department spokesperson Sean McCormack. ”But nobody wants to see a cessation of violence done in such a way that you end up back where we are today at some point in the future.”
The US has maintained Israel has every right to defend itself and also urged restraint over the offensive, which has split the international community and raised fears of dragging Syria and Iran into the conflict.
Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki of Iran, one of Hezbollah’s main backers along with Syria, proposed a ”ceasefire” and an exchange of prisoners between Israel and Arab militants.
But both Israel and Hezbollah — which is demanding the release of Arab prisoners in exchange for the soldiers — said they are unwilling to accept an unconditional ceasefire.
Twenty-four Israelis have been killed since last Wednesday, including 12 civilians in a barrage of Hezbollah rocket fire across the border, and 12 service officers.
Israel’s assault on Lebanon opened up another battleground after it launched a similar offensive launched three weeks ago against Gaza where militants are holding a third soldier hostage.
At least 87 Palestinians and one Israeli have been killed since Israel sent troops back into the territory to try to free the captured soldier. — AFP, Reuters