A tiny United States marine force landed in Lebanon on Thursday to evacuate Americans stranded by a nine-day old Israeli bombardment, which has killed more than 300 people but failed to stop Hezbollah rocket strikes on Israel.
It was the US military’s first return to Lebanon since it withdrew in 1984, months after a Shi’ite Muslim suicide bomber destroyed a marine barracks, killing 241 US service personnel.
There was no sign Israel or Hezbollah was ready to heed the Beirut government’s pleas for an immediate halt to a war that has killed at least 310 people in Lebanon and 29 in Israel.
United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan called for an immediate end to hostilities on Thursday, but said a team he had sent to the region believed a sustainable ceasefire would take time to arrange.
He told the Security Council a quick end to the fighting would allow aid workers to reach those in need and would ”give diplomacy the chance to work out a practical package of actions that would provide a lasting solution to the current crisis”.
Hezbollah forces wounded three Israeli soldiers in clashes in two southern border areas where Israeli units pushed in on Wednesday to raid guerrilla positions, the Israeli army said, adding that it believed two Hezbollah fighters had been killed.
Hezbollah said it had destroyed two Israeli tanks in house-to-house fighting in the village of Maroun al-Ras.
United Nations peacekeepers in the south reported heavy firing along the border and Hezbollah-Israeli ground fighting in Maroun al-Ras in the central sector, and Marwahin village in the west.
Israel told Germany it would welcome any help Berlin could give in trying to free two soldiers whose July 12 capture by Hezbollah was the immediate trigger for the war in Lebanon.
But it also reiterated its rejection of Hezbollah’s proposal for a prisoner swap similar to one mediated by Germany in 2004.
Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesperson Yigal Palmor, in remarks to Germany’s ZDF television, had noted the ”constructive role” played in the past by German mediators and said: ”Now is the time when the same German officials could be active again.”
Israel says the war will go on until the Shi’ite group frees the two soldiers and can no longer menace its border. Hezbollah rockets have killed 15 people in northern Israel in nine days.
Lebanon’s Health Ministry put the death toll so far at 310. The government says the conflict has displaced half a million people and aid agencies say a humanitarian crisis looms.
Israeli planes struck at Shi’ite areas in Beirut and east and south Lebanon, killing four civilians in a car near Tyre, but far fewer casualties were reported than on previous days.
The Israeli army said 30 rockets landed in northern Israel, but no casualties were reported.
Ceasefire calls
About 40 marines arrived on a beach in a Christian area north of Beirut at dawn to ferry about 1 200 Americans to Cyprus as part of efforts to extract US citizens caught in a war zone like thousands of other foreigners, many of Lebanese origin.
The marines, helped by Lebanese soldiers, waded through waves to carry women and children to the landing craft.
”We are thankful to leave but our hearts and prayers are with Lebanon and its people,” said evacuee Mireille Ayoub (47) from Los Angeles. ”It’s very bad there, unsafe and uncertain.”
France, trying to evacuate a total of 8 000 of its citizens by sea, arranged for about 550 French and other European nationals to embark from the battered southern port of Tyre.
”For the past 15 years I’ve come here for a month every year. I’ve never imagined that I’d leave like this. I’m going but leaving my heart in my country and my village,” said Mustapha Safieddine (48) a French national, at the dockside.
Hezbollah has not impeded the exodus of foreigners trapped by Israeli bombing of ports, airports and roads. Israel is under pressure not to endanger the bus convoys to Syria and ferries to Cyprus, Greece and Turkey that embassies have organised.
Russia has joined France in demanding a ceasefire, but the US, Israel’s chief ally, has opposed any resolution by the United Nations Security Council calling for a halt to the fighting.
Moscow criticised the ”unprecedented scale of victims and destruction” caused by Israel’s operation in Lebanon.
Saudi Arabia’s defence minister also voiced outrage, saying Israel was ”playing with the lives of civilians”.
Israel’s offensive in Lebanon has coincided with a major push into the Gaza Strip to retrieve another soldier, seized by Palestinian gunmen on June 25 and stop cross-border rocket fire.
Israeli troops killed a Palestinian in clashes in a central Gaza refugee camp on Thursday, witnesses said. An air strike on the same camp killed a militant and wounded eight, medics said. Troops killed 15 Palestinians during raids in the Gaza Strip and West Bank on Wednesday. Israel’s offensive, launched on June 28, has killed about 110 Palestinians, half of them militants. — Reuters