Westerners flee Lebanon as fighting intensifies

Westerners fled by land, sea and air as Israel launched waves of bombings that hit south Beirut, the border and the eastern city of Baalbek in the early hours today.

At least five people were killed when a bomb hit a house in a village near the border with Israel, witnesses said.

Four people were wounded in Baalbek overnight, after Israeli ground troops briefly entered Lebanon yesterday and Hezbollah rockets knocked down a three-storey house in northern Israel. A Lebanese military base south of Beirut was also hit today.

Later this morning, another attack targeted the town of Qana in southern Lebanon, destroying a four-storey building, Lebanese TV reported.

By early this morning, at least 215 Lebanese had been reported killed in the seven days of fighting.

The latest victims were a family in the village of Aitaroun. At least 24 Israelis have been killed so far.

However, there were signs of movement on the diplomatic front.

A commercial ship, the Orient Queen, escorted by a US destroyer, was due to begin evacuating some of the 25,000 Americans in Lebanon today, joining US military helicopters that have already ferried about a score of US citizens to a British base on the nearby Mediterranean island of Cyprus.

More helicopter transfers were planned, a US official said.

On the seventh day of its major offensive in Lebanon, Israel was allowing evacuation ships through its blockade of the country.

France and Italy moved hundreds of nationals and other Europeans out yesterday on a Greek cruise liner. An Italian ship left earlier with 350 people and other governments were organising pullouts by land to Syria.

Diplomatic efforts gained traction with Israel signalling it might scale back its demands. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said two Israeli soldiers captured by Hezbollah had to be released and Hezbollah must pull back from the border for fighting to halt.

An aide to Olmert indicated, however, that the prime minister was ready to compromise on the question of dismantling the Islamic militant group. However, the aide said he might oppose a UN and British idea of deploying international forces to Lebanon.

The current UN force in southern Lebanon has proven impotent and a larger, stronger force could hamper any future Israeli attacks, should any deal fall apart.

Delivering an impassioned speech to Israel’s parliament yesterday, Olmert said the country would have no mercy on Lebanese militants who attack its cities with rockets.

“We shall seek out every installation, hit every terrorist helping to attack Israeli citizens, destroy all the terrorist infrastructure, in every place. We shall continue this until Hezbollah does the basic and fair things required of it by every civilised person,” he said.

Hezbollah’s patron Iran, meanwhile, said a ceasefire and prisoner exchange would be acceptable and fair. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s special political adviser emerged from talks with Lebanon’s prime minister to say he would present Israel “concrete ideas” to end the fighting.

“We have made some promising first efforts on the way forward,” the adviser, Vijay Nambiar, told reporters, while warning that much works needs to be done.

One UN official said Nambiar’s mission had “very useful discussions” with Lebanon’s prime minister and the speaker of Lebanon’s parliament, a close ally of Hezbollah’s leader.

“They have agreed on some specifics, and this is going to be carried to Israel, and they will probably go back to Lebanon if they are a promising signal,” said the official, UN Undersecretary General for Political Affairs Ibrahim Gambari.

Late yesterday, Hezbollah dismissed international ceasefire proposals as “Israeli conditions”, accusing foreign envoys of allowing Israel time to continue its military offensive to force Lebanon into submission.

“The international envoys have conveyed Israeli conditions. These conditions are rejected,” said Hezbollah legislator Hussein Haj Hassan.

“We accept what secures our country’s interest and pride and dignity and not to submit to Israeli conditions,” he said on al-Jazeera television late yesterday.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Annan called for sending international forces to southern Lebanon, and the US said it did not oppose the idea.

President Bush also suggested, in a moment of unscripted frank discussion caught on tape, that Annan simply call the president of Syria, another Hezbollah backer, to “make something happen”.

Speaking with Blair privately before the G-8 leaders began their final lunch in St Petersburg, Russia, in an exchange caught on tape, Bush swore over Hezbollah’s border raids and rockets.

“See, the irony is that what they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this s*** and it’s over,” Bush said.

Meanwhile, the fighting went on.

Attacks by Israeli warplanes and big guns late on Sunday and early yesterday killed 17 people and wounded at least 53, security officials said.

Israeli government spokesman Asaf Shariv said ground troops also entered southern Lebanon, attacked Hezbollah bases near the border and quickly returned to Israel.

In the deepest-ever Hezbollah missile strike into Israel, Katyusha rockets struck the Israeli town of Atlit yesterday, about 55 kilometres south of the border and 10 kilometres south of the port city of Haifa. Nobody was hurt.

Later, guerrillas fired three rocket barrages into Haifa, destroying the three-storey building and wounding at least three people, Israeli medics said.

Israel also kept up pressure in the Gaza Strip as it searched for another soldier previously kidnapped by Hamas-linked militants there.

It bombed the empty Palestinian Foreign Ministry building for the second time in less than a week in what it said was a warning to the ruling Hamas party.

Also yesterday, Israel attack jets killed two people in Beirut Harbour and started a large fire that was later extinguished.

Warplanes set fire to a gas storage tank in the northern neighbourhood of Dawra and another fuel storage tank at Beirut Airport. The airport has been closed since Thursday, when Israeli jets blasted its runways.

Israeli fighter jets again hit the Beirut-to-Damascus highway, which has been targeted as part of a strategy of severing Lebanon’s links to the outside world. Two people were killed, Lebanese officials said.

Eight Lebanese soldiers were killed when Israeli jets hit a small fishing port at Abdeh in northern Lebanon near a highway leading to Syria. Twelve Lebanese soldiers also were wounded.

An Israeli missile strike on southern Lebanon missed its apparent target, a Hezbollah site, and hit a private house, killing two people, security officials said.