Lebanon’s government on Wednesday ordered 15 000 troops to move south to take full control, with United Nations peacekeepers, when Israeli troops withdraw after a 34-day war with Hezbollah guerrillas.
Officials said Lebanese troops would deploy south of the Litani River, about 20km from the Israeli border, on Thursday.
The Cabinet, which includes two Hezbollah ministers, reached its decision only hours after Israel’s army chief said a possible pullout from the south within 10 days depended on the Lebanese army and a beefed-up UN force moving in quickly.
French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy, whose country may lead the new UN force and who called earlier in the day for a quick Lebanese army deployment, met Prime Minister Fouad Siniora in Beirut just before the Cabinet session.
Israel and Hezbollah have generally maintained a fragile truce in the south since Monday, following a UN Security Council resolution that authorised up to 13 000 well-armed troops to augment the 2 000-strong Unifil (UN peacekeeping force) force now in Lebanon.
An estimated 200 000 mostly Shi’ite refugees have streamed home this week, many of them to villages devastated by bombing.
The truce has allowed belated burials of some war victims.
”It’s the first chance we’ve had. We’ve been on the road for 11 hours,” said Raouf Shayato, who arrived at Tyre hospital to collect the body of his cousin Nazira, killed on July 22.
More than 100 corpses lie unclaimed at the overflowing hospital mortuary. Officials postponed plans for a mass burial to give relatives more time to collect them.
Civilians have returned en masse without waiting for Israel to leave pockets of territory it has occupied in the south.
”If the Lebanese army does not move down within a number of days to the south … the way I see it, we must stop our withdrawal,” Israeli army chief Dan Halutz said.
However, a senior Israeli government official, who asked not to be named, said Israeli forces would not withdraw completely until the expanded UN force and Lebanese army move in.
Before that, the official said, the army would pull back gradually to a narrow no-go zone along the border, which it could control largely with artillery, tank fire and air strikes.
Hezbollah reiterated that it has the right to attack any Israeli forces remaining on Lebanese soil.
”The presence of Israeli tanks in the south is an aggression and the resistance reserves its right to face such aggression if it persists,” Sheikh Nabil Kaouk, Hezbollah’s top official in south Lebanon, told reporters in Tyre. — Reuters