Israel not invading Lebanon, says Peres

Israeli troops fought Hezbollah guerrillas in southern Lebanon today, and there were Israeli casualties, the Israeli military said in Jerusalem.

The Israelis had crossed into Lebanon early in the morning on a limited mission to seek and destroy Hezbollah weapons. Hezbollah’s Al-Manar television channel reported that two Israeli soldiers had been killed and three wounded.

Israel said it did not plan to target Hezbollah’s main sponsors, Iran and Syria, during the current fighting.

“We will leave Iran to the world community, and Syria as well,” Vice Premier Shimon Peres told Army Radio. “It’s very important to understand that we are not instilling world order.”

Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Dan Gillerman, stressed the incursion was not large-scale and would not last long.

“This is an operation which is very measured, very local,” Gillerman told CNN. “This is no way an invasion of Lebanon. This is no way the beginning of any kind of occupation of Lebanon.”

Israeli military officials said that, for several days, small numbers of their soldiers have going in and out of south Lebanon looking for Hezbollah bases and weapons. The officials would not give the exact number of troops involved or their location.

Israeli fighter-bombers destroyed nearly 20 houses and buildings in Lebanon overnight in their campaign to wipe out the rockets that guerrillas have been firing into Israel.

With diplomatic efforts stalled, Israel today said its airstrikes had destroyed “about 50%” of the arsenal of Hezbollah, whose guerrillas have bombarded northern Israeli towns with rockets that have killed 13 civilians in the past eight days.

“It will take us time to destroy what is left,” Brig. Gen. Alon Friedman, a senior army commander, told Israeli Army Radio.

Israeli planes continued their strikes on Beirut today, hitting a Christian suburb on the eastern side of the city for the first time.

The target was a truck-mounted machine used to drill for water but which could have been mistaken for a missile launcher. The vehicle, parked in an empty vehicle park in Ashrafieh, was destroyed but no one was hurt.

The planes also hit the southern suburbs, a Hezbollah stronghold, causing one explosion that reverberated across the city much louder than any previous impact in the eight days of fighting.

More Israeli missiles landed in two towns outside Beirut – Chuweifat and Hadath. One person was killed at the Galerie Semaan junction, near Hadath, police said.

The Israeli airstrikes late yesterday and early today killed at least 19 people, bringing to 245 the number of people killed in Lebanon since the fighting began on July 12 when Hezbollah guerrillas raided an Israeli border outpost and kidnapped two soldiers.

Twenty-five Israelis have been killed in Israel in the past eight days.

Five people were killed when a missile struck a neighbourhood in the southern Lebanese town of Nabatiyeh, police and hospital officials said. The target was a commercial office of a firm belonging to Hezbollah, but those killed were residents.

The bodies of three members of the Hamed family and a Sri Lankan maid were retrieved from the destroyed building. A fifth body remained under the debris.

In the village of Srifa, near Tyre in southern Lebanon, the airstrikes flattened 15 houses. The village’s headman, Hussein Kamaledine, said 25 to 30 people lived in the houses, but it was not known if they were at home at the time. Many people have fled southern Lebanon.

“This is a real massacre,” Kamaledine told Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV as fire engines extinguished the blaze and rescue workers searched for survivors.

In the southern village of Ghaziyeh, one person was killed and two were wounded when a missile struck a nearby building that housed a Hezbollah-affiliated social institution.

In the eastern Bekaa Valley, four people were killed and three were wounded in an air raid on the village of Loussi, police said.