Israeli warplanes battered Lebanon on Tuesday, killing 26 people, and more Hezbollah rockets hit the Israeli city of Haifa, with no sign that diplomacy would halt the week-old conflict any time soon.
Nine family members, including children, were killed and four wounded in an air strike on their house in the village of Aitaroun. Four people were killed in other strikes in the south.
A truck carrying medical supplies donated by the United Arab Emirates was hit and its driver killed on the Beirut-Damascus highway, the Health Ministry said.
An air raid on a Lebanese army barracks in the Jamhour area east of Beirut killed 11 Lebanese soldiers, including four officers, and wounded 30.
Hezbollah, a Shi’ite Muslim group backed by Syria and Iran, said one of its fighters had been killed, but gave no details.
Up to six rockets slammed into Haifa, Israel’s third-largest city and now a favoured target for Hezbollah. No casualties were reported. A rocket salvo killed eight people in Haifa on Sunday.
Israel’s army refused to rule out a ground invasion only six years after it ended a 22-year occupation of south Lebanon.
”At this stage we do not think we have to activate massive ground forces into Lebanon but if we have to do this, we will,” Moshe Kaplinsky, Israel’s deputy army chief, told Israel Radio.
He said the offensive, launched after Hezbollah fighters seized two Israeli soldiers and killed eight in a cross-border raid on July 12, would end within weeks. Israel needed more time to complete ”very clear goals”, Kaplinsky added.
United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan called for a bigger, better armed and more robust international force to stabilise southern Lebanon and buy time for the Lebanese government to disarm Hezbollah guerrillas.
Shrugging off US and Israeli reluctance, Annan said he expected European troops to join the proposed force in a bid to end the fighting and prevent a wider Middle East conflagration.
Annan and British Prime Minister Tony Blair have urged the UN Security Council to deploy a security force in Lebanon but Israel says it is too early to discuss it and Washington has questioned how it could stop Hizbollah from attacking Israel.
International action
”It is urgent that the international community acts to make a difference on the ground,” Annan said in Brussels, suggesting a force that would operate differently from toothless UN peacekeepers who have patrolled south Lebanon since 1978.
”The force will be larger, the way I see it, much larger than the 2 000-man force we have there,” Annan said.
He was speaking after talks with European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, who said some European Union member states were willing to contribute troops.
A poll in the mass-circulation Yedioth Ahronoth daily showed a vast majority of Israelis backed the Lebanon offensive. Many favoured assassinating Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah.
It showed 86% of Israelis believed the army’s attacks on Lebanon were justified.
Thousands of foreigners fled Lebanon, some by road to Syria, others seeking places on US and European ships after Beirut’s airport was closed by Israeli bombardment. About 100 000 Lebanese have fled their homes to escape the violence.
Israel’s campaign has killed 230 people, all but 26 of them civilians, and inflicted the heaviest damage on Lebanon since the 1982 Israeli invasion to expel Palestinian guerrillas.
Hezbollah has responded by attacking an Israeli naval vessel off Beirut, killing four sailors, and firing hundreds of rockets across the border, killing 12 Israelis.
Israel is also pursuing an offensive in the Gaza Strip after Palestinian militants captured another soldier on June 25.
Lebanon has repeatedly called for an immediate ceasefire, but world powers said any solution to the crisis must include the release of the two soldiers. Israel also wants Hezbollah to disarm in line with UN Security Council resolutions.
The Beirut government is too weak and divided to force Hezbollah to yield to such demands.
The Shi’ite group wants to swap the soldiers for Lebanese and Arab prisoners in Israeli jails. Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said Hezbollah must free its two captives unconditionally.
She was speaking just hours after Public Security Minister Avi Dichter said Israel might at some stage have to negotiate over Lebanese prisoners held in Israel to end the crisis.
Rocket attacks may constitute war crimes
Human Rights Watch said on Tuesday Hezbollah’s attacks on Israel with imprecise rockets in civilian areas violated international humanitarian law and most likely constituted ”war crimes”.
The recent attacks were ”at best indiscriminate attacks in civilian areas, at worst the deliberate targeting of civilians”, the New York-based group said in a statement.
”Either way, they were serious violations of international humanitarian law and probable war crimes,” it said.
Some of the rockets launched against Haifa contain hundreds of metal ball bearings and were of little military use but could cause serious harm to civilians, the group wrote.
”Attacking civilian areas indiscriminately is a serious violation of international humanitarian law and can constitute a war crime,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, director of the group’s Middle East and North Africa division.
”Hezbollah’s use of warheads that have limited military use and cause grievous suffering to the victims only makes the crime worse.”
International humanitarian law prohibits warring parties using weapons in civilian areas that are so inaccurate that they cannot be directed at military targets without a substantial risk of causing harm to civilians, Human Rights Watch said.
The group has urged both Hezbollah and Israel to respect the prohibition against targeting civilians or conducting indiscriminate attacks in civilian areas.
Human Rights Watch on Monday called on the Israeli government to divulge details about a bombing over the weekend that reportedly killed 16 civilians in a convoy near the village of Marwahin. – Reuters, AFP