Israeli troops fight Hezbollah in Lebanon incursion

ISRAELI troops met fierce resistance from Hezbollah guerrillas yesterday as they crossed into Lebanon to seek tunnels and weapons after warning residents in a 20-mile swathe of the south along the border to flee.

Israeli warplanes battered south Beirut again a day after a wave of bombings killed as many as 70 people, according to Lebanese television.

A large fight between Israeli forces and Hezbollah guerrillas also broke out yesterday evening on the Lebanese side of the border, the Israeli army said. It said its troops suffered several casualties.

At least 306 people have been killed in Lebanon since the Israeli campaign began, according to the security forces control room that collates casualties. Twenty-nine Israelis have been killed, including 14 soldiers.

The UN has said at least a half million people have been displaced in Lebanon.

Israel’s series of small ground forays across the border have aimed to push back Hezbollah guerrillas who have continued to fire rockets into northern Israel despite more than a week of massive Israeli bombardment against them.

Guerrillas fired 25 rockets into Israel yesterday, but there were no casualties.

Last night an Israeli military radio station beamed into south Lebanon issued a warning telling “all residents south of the Litani to evacuate”, raising fears of a ground assault.

The Al-Mashriq station has continually issued evacuation calls for individual villages and towns in the south, warning of imminent strikes, some of which occur and some do not.

The guerrillas have been fighting back hard against Israel’s ground forays, wounding three Israeli soldiers in a fierce gun battle earlier, a day after killing two.

Israel has mainly limited itself to attacks from the air and sea.

But an Israeli army spokesman refused to rule out the possibility of a full-scale invasion.

Hezbollah said it was “fully ready” to confront any possible Israeli ground offensive.

Mahmoud Koumati, deputy leader of Hezbollah’s political bureau, told the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation television the group has enough missiles to fight Israel for “long months”.

The Lebanese government is under international pressure to deploy troops in the south to rein in Hezbollah guerrillas — but many considered it too weak to do so without deeply fracturing the country.

On Wednesday night the Israeli military said that aircraft dropped 23 tons of explosives on what it believed was a bunker used by senior Hezbollah leaders in the Bourj al-Barajneh neighbourhood of Beirut.

Hezbollah said none of its members were hurt and denied a leadership bunker was in the area, saying a building under construction to be a mosque was hit.

Hezbollah has a headquarters compound in Bourj al-Barajneh that is off limits to the Lebanese police and army, so security officials could not confirm the strike. However, Israel’s UN Ambassador Dan Gillerman said: “I can assure you that we know exactly what we hit.

“This was indeed the headquarters of the Hezbollah leadership.”

Yesterday Israeli jets struck houses believed used by Hezbollah officials in the town of Hermel in the western Bekaa Valley, wounding at least three.

Five minutes later, Israeli fighter jets also attacked and destroyed a five-storey residential and commercial building that reportedly once had a Hezbollah office in the Bekaa Valley city of Baalbek, a Hezbollah stronghold, witnesses said. There was no immediate word on casualties.

Two civilians were killed last night in strikes on bridges in Lebanon’s far north, near Tripoli.

Israeli jets also raided a detention centre in Khiam in south Lebanon yesterday.