Israel steps up air raids in Lebanon

Israeli missiles struck Lebanon from north to south and in the Bekaa Valley near Syria, killing 35 people, including a family who had come from Canada to visit their home village.

The attack was a massive retaliation after a Hezbollah rocket barrage left eight dead in the northern Israeli city of Haifa – a dramatic turning point in five days of violence that led Israel to accuse Syria and Iran of providing guerrillas with sophisticated weapons.

Israel said the missiles that hit Haifa were more advanced, with longer range and heavier warheads, than the hundreds of rockets that have rained on northern Israel.

Fearing the violence could spiral out of control, world leaders at the G8 summit meeting in St Petersburg, Russia, produced a framework to end the crisis, and a United Nations envoy landed in Beirut for talks. The G8 nations expressed concern over “rising civilian casualties on all sides” and urged both sides to stop the violence.

But both Israel and Hezbollah signalled that their attacks would only intensify in an already brutal fight that has killed at least 178 in Lebanon and 23 in Israel.

Raids last night killed 13 people and 53. Eight of the dead were Lebanese soldiers who were killed when aircraft attacked a small fishing port at Abdeh in northernmost Lebanon near a main road leading to Syria, about four miles from the border. Witnesses and security officials said 12 others were wounded after the attack destroyed the position. Lebanon’s army has largely remained on the sidelines of the conflict that flared up between Hezbollah and Israel last week.

The Israeli army said it was investigating the incidents. “In principle the Israeli military does not target Lebanese soldiers,” an Israeli army spokesman said.

The targeted northern sectors are far off from Israel, in zones where Hezbollah is not known to operate.

The Israeli army said it had targeted radar stations there, because they had been used by Hezbollah to hit a warship on Friday. It all but accused the Lebanese military of lending its support to Hezbollah.

“The attacks … are against radar stations used, among other things, in the attack on the Israeli missile boat, by Hezbollah in co-operation with the Lebanese military,” the Israeli army spokesman told The Associated Press.

Israel’s prime minister Ehud Olmert vowed “far-reaching consequences” for the Haifa attack, Hezbollah’s deadliest strike ever on Israel. The Sunday morning barrage of 20 rockets came after Israeli warplanes unleashed their heaviest strikes yet on Beirut, flattening apartment buildings and blowing up a power station to cut electricity to swathes of the capital.

Hezbollah’s leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, said that despite the barrage, the guerrillas were “in their full strength and power” and that their “missile stockpiles are still full”.

“When the Zionists behave like there are no rules and no red lines and no limits to the confrontation, it is our right to behave in the same way,” a tired-looking, but defiant Nasrallah said in a televised address. He said Hezbollah hit Haifa because of Israel’s strikes on Lebanese civilians.

Seven Canadians of Lebanese origin, all members of the same family, were killed yesterday by an Israeli strike on their village in the south where they had come for a summer visit. Canada said it was sending commercial ships to evacuate its citizens.

Around Beirut, strikes on Sunday had exploded fuel depots at Beirut’s airport, already shut down by days of hits, and smashed into the Jiyeh power plant for the second time.

Hezbollah retaliated with rockets that exploded in the Israeli town of Afula and Upper Nazareth, showing a longer range than previous barrages. There were no immediate reports of casualties.

Syria warned yesterday that any aggression against it “will be met with a firm and direct response whose timing and methods are unlimited”.

Iran threatened “unimaginable damage” to Israel if Syria were attacked, and its supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Hezbollah was winning its fight against Israel and would not disarm.