Israel unleashed more air strikes on Lebanon and Hezbollah fired rockets at Haifa on Sunday as a senior United Nations official demanded a halt to the violence to allow aid to reach desperate civilians. United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, leaving for the Middle East later in the day, has said she will pursue a lasting solution, not an immediate ceasefire.
Israel will pursue its war on Hezbollah with more military incursions into south Lebanon but will not unleash a full-scale invasion for the moment, an Israeli army spokesperson said on Saturday. Thousands of Lebanese civilians have fled north fearing Israel will invade and expand an 11-day-old bombardment of Lebanon which has killed 345 people, mostly civilians.
United States marines pushed baby carriages and lifted children into transport boats as Americans desperate to flee the Israeli bombardment of Lebanon lined up near Beirut’s port as a massive evacuation operation picked up speed. Up to 5 000 US citizens were expected to leave on Friday — the largest number in three days.
Israel called up thousands of reservist soldiers on Friday but a military source ruled out a mass invasion of southern Lebanon, saying the army would step up pinpoint cross-border attacks against Hezbollah guerrillas. Fearing a large-scale Israeli ground attack, thousands of Lebanese civilians fled north after the Jewish state warned them to leave border villages.
Thousands of Lebanese civilians fled north on Friday after Israel warned them to leave border villages and called up 3Â 000 army reserves in a possible prelude to a ground offensive. Amid world concern, United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice plans to leave for the Middle East on Sunday in what diplomats called a bid to reduce the fighting.
Israel pounded Lebanon from the air on Friday in its bloody 10-day-old assault against Hezbollah, but the guerrilla group insisted it would only free two Israeli soldiers it is holding as part of a prisoner swap. Israel said two of its helicopters collided near the Lebanese border, killing a pilot and injuring three crewmen.
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.
Two foreign TV journalists and their two Lebanese assistants were abducted by the Hezbollah militia in Beirut on Thursday on suspicion of spying, a Lebanese internal security forces officer said. "The crew was filming in the area of the Sanayeh gardens [a public park] when Hezbollah elements seized them on suspicion of being spies," the officer told the media.
Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah stares defiantly from posters in Burj al-Barajneh but residents say the Hezbollah leader was safely elsewhere when Israeli jets bombed the southern Beirut suburb aiming to kill him. The Israeli military said dozens of warplanes dropped 23 tonnes of explosives on Wednesday night at a site where it said intelligence showed senior Hezbollah leaders were sheltering in a bunker.
Israeli warplanes pounded Lebanon and soldiers clashed with Hezbollah guerrillas along the border on Thursday as United States marines landed near Beirut to rescue 1Â 200 Americans trapped by the fighting. Frightened civilians in Lebanon feared the bombing would get worse once the evacuation of thousands of foreign nationals is completed.
Israeli air strikes on Lebanon killed 57 civilians and a Hezbollah fighter on Wednesday, the deadliest toll of the eight-day-old war, as thousands of villagers fled north and more foreigners were evacuated. Hezbollah rockets killed two children in the northern city of Nazareth, medics said. More Hezbollah rockets fell on the city of Haifa and one hit an empty seafront restaurant.
The United States and other nations were plucking their citizens from Lebanon on Wednesday, as thousands fled Israeli air raids any way they could. ”It’s very bad, very sad, I can’t believe what’s happening,” said a tearful Lubna Jaber, an Australian who had come to visit relatives in Lebanon.
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. 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.
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.
”Are my sons under the ashes? Only God knows,” says a veiled Oum Hassan, weeping as she rests in a public garden after fleeing Beirut’s southern suburbs where her home was turned to rubble by Israeli air strikes. Clad in black, the widow sits on a green bench under the tall trees to seek shelter from the blazing summer sun and cries.
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.
Lebanon shook under a new wave of air raids on Monday after Israel vowed a fierce response to Hezbollah guerrilla attacks with no sign of a let-up in a conflict that has killed about 200 people in six days. At least 21 people were killed as fighter jets slammed missiles into the port of Beirut, a military base in the northern city of Tripoli, and Baalbek, a Hezbollah stronghold in the east.
The lights aren’t completely out in Lebanon yet. The bloggers in Beirut are still typing furiously away in front of their computer screens. Although Israeli air strikes have taken out much of the country’s infrastructure and cut electricity to parts of the capital, people are turning to the internet as one of their information sources — and to get their views out.
Israeli air strikes killed 17 people in Lebanon on Monday and Hezbollah announced more rocket attacks on Israel after world powers put the onus on the Syrian- and Iranian-backed Shi’ite guerrilla group to end the fighting. Overnight raids destroyed two army posts on the northern Lebanese coast, killing nine Lebanese soldiers, and damaged the homes of Hezbollah officials in eastern Lebanon
Israeli air raids shook Beirut on Sunday, the fifth day of a devastating assault on Hezbollah and Lebanon that has prompted no United Nations Security Council action and only a mild plea for restraint from Israel’s United States ally. US President George Bush, speaking at a G8 summit in Russia, characterised Israel’s campaign as self-defence and did not back Lebanon’s pleas for an immediate ceasefire.
Israeli forces destroyed the Beirut headquarters of Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah in air strikes on Saturday after again threatening to kill the Shi’ite Muslim militant leader. The stronghold has come under repeated Israeli attack by air and from warships offshore, causing panic in the densely populated streets.
Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah declared ”open war” on Israel on Friday after emerging unscathed from an Israeli air strike on his home and office in the Lebanese capital. Meanwhile, a United Nations Security Council emergency meeting ended with no action on Beirut’s demand for an immediate end to Israeli air strikes on its territory.
Residents of Beirut’s southern suburbs hit by Israeli air strikes overnight vowed on Friday to stand by Hezbollah, despite rising casualties from attacks triggered by its capture of two Israeli soldiers. The raid on the guerrilla group’s stronghold in the south of the capital killed three people and wounded 40.
Israel struck Beirut airport and blockaded Lebanese ports on Thursday, intensifying reprisals that have killed 53 civilians since Lebanese Hezbollah fighters seized two Israeli soldiers and killed eight a day earlier. Hezbollah retaliated for Israeli ”massacres” by firing at least 70 rockets at Nahariya in northern Israel. A civilian was killed and at least 42 were wounded, Israeli medics said.
Israeli warplanes bombed Beirut’s international airport before dawn on Thursday and killed at least 27 Lebanese civilians in a series of raids after Israel vowed a harsh response to the killing and capture of its soldiers by Hezbollah guerrillas. Fighter jets swooped in on the airport, firing missiles on two runways, forcing the divertion of flights to neighbouring Cyprus.
A simple house and its inhabitants in Butovo, on the southern outskirts of Moscow, have become a cause célèbre throughout Russia. The Prokofyev family who live in it are the talisman of local residents struggling to protect their homes from demolition by the city’s government.
No image available
/ 9 February 2006
The head of Lebanese militant movement Hezbollah on Thursday told hundreds of thousands of cheering Shi’ites not to compromise until Denmark apologises for the prophet Muhammad cartoons. Thousands of black-clad men and women, most of them youths, braved driving rain in central Beirut to attend the rally.
No image available
/ 13 January 2006
When, in 2001, Ariel Sharon first took office, there was no great contrast between Arab governments and their publics in what they had to say about it. But now he is departing, at least from office, the difference between popular and the official Arab reactions has been much remarked upon. The popular reaction is most pronounced in the Palestinian refugee camps.
No image available
/ 21 December 2005
A sleek, official-looking convoy rolls up in front of Beirut’s Maronite patriarchate. No one emerges. Seconds later, a lone, humdrum jeep pops up. And out steps Lebanon’s Prime Minister Fuad Siniora. Such fake convoys are just one of the methods used by Lebanese politicians trying to outwit potential attackers who have reportedly already compiled hit lists of their next targets.
No image available
/ 17 December 2005
The outgoing chief of the United Nations probe into the murder of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri said in an interview published on Saturday he was convinced Syria was responsible for the murder. Asked by the Arab daily Asharq al-Awsat if he was ”perfectly convinced of Syria’s responsibility in the murder of Hariri,” German magistrate Detlev Mehlis said ”yes”.
No image available
/ 14 December 2005
Lebanon on Wednesday buried slain anti-Syrian MP and press magnate Gibran Tueni, whose killing sharpened international pressure on former power broker Syria and triggered angry calls in Beirut for a regime change in Damascus. Tueni (48) was killed in a massive car bomb blast on Monday.
No image available
/ 12 December 2005
A prominent anti-Syrian journalist and MP and three other people were killed in a car bombing in a Beirut suburb on Monday, the latest in a string of similar attacks in Lebanon. One witness said the bomb blew up inside Christian MP Gibran Tueni’s vehicle, blasting it off the road and setting it ablaze. A fellow MP immediately pointed the finger at Syria over the bombing.