Israel resumes airstrikes in Lebanon

Israeli troops met fierce resistance from Hezbollah guerrillas today as they crossed into Lebanon to seek tunnels and weapons for a second consecutive day as Israel refused to rule out a full-scale invasion.

Israeli warplanes also launched new airstrikes on Beirut’s southern suburbs, a Hezbollah stronghold, shortly after daybreak today, according to witnesses and Hezbollah’s al-Manar TV. But no casualties were immediately reported.

Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora, meanwhile, said Hezbollah had created a “state within a state” and must be disarmed – his strongest statement yet against the Islamic militant group.

“The entire world must help us disarm Hezbollah. But first we need to reach a ceasefire,” Saniora told the Milan-based newspaper Corriere della Sera.

The Lebanese prime minister has hinted that Hezbollah will eventually need to lay down its arms, but this was his first public call for disarmament, a day after he issued an urgent appeal for a ceasefire to stop the attacks against his country.

Hezbollah said in a statement that its guerrillas foiled a new Israeli attempt to stage a ground attack and destroyed two Israeli tanks as they tried to enter the Lebanese border village of Maroun al-Ras early today.

The Israeli army said three Israeli soldiers were wounded in two separate clashes today, but it wasn't immediately clear if either of those were at Maroun al-Ras. The army didn’t have an immediate comment on the claim of the two destroyed tanks.

Nearly one third of all casualties in the Lebanon-Israel conflict have been children, according to the United Nations’ emergency relief co-ordinator, Jan Egeland.

He said it appeared neither Hezbollah nor the Israelis seemed to care about civilian suffering.

Nearly a third of the dead or wounded were children and the wounded could not be helped because roads and bridges had been cut by Israeli air strikes.

“It is nearly impossible in southern Lebanon to move anything anywhere because it is too dangerous. It is too dangerous for our people to move things,” Egeland said.

Without a truce allowing aid agencies to begin the relief effort there would be a “catastrophe“.

Yesterday, Israeli troops crossing the border to look for guerrilla tunnels and weapons clashed with Hezbollah guerrillas near the Lebanese coastal border town of Naqoura. The Israeli army said two soldiers had been killed and nine wounded in that fighting, while Hezbollah said one guerrilla was killed.

Israel has mainly limited itself to attacks from the air and sea, reluctant to send in ground troops on terrain dominated by Hezbollah in its offensive, launched after Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers in a July 12 cross-border attack.

But an Israeli army spokesman refused to rule out the possibility of a full-scale invasion. Israel also broadcast warnings into south Lebanon yesterday, telling civilians to leave the region, a possible prelude to a larger Israeli ground operation.

“There is a possibility – all our options are open. At the moment, it’s a very limited, specific incursion but all options remain open,” said Capt. Jacob Dallal, an Israeli army spokesman.

He said Israel had hit “1,000 targets in the past eight days – 20% (of them were) missile launching sites, control and command centres, missiles and so forth.”

Israel said its airstrikes had destroyed “about 50 per cent” of Hezbollah’s arsenal. “It will take us time to destroy what is left,” Brig. Gen. Alon Friedman, a senior army commander, told Israeli Army Radio.

The reported overnight attack on Beirut’s southern Bir al-Abed neighbourhood followed a relatively quiet night in the capital after yesterday’s Israeli airstrike on what the military believed was a bunker used by senior Hezbollah leaders.

The Israeli military said that aircraft dropped 23 tonnes of explosives on the target in the Bourj al-Barajneh neighbourhood of Beirut between 8pm and 9pm local time. Soon after, Hezbollah issued a statement saying “no Hezbollah leaders or elements were killed in the strike,” but a building under construction to be a mosque was hit.

Interviewed on CNN early today, Israel’s UN Ambassador Dan Gillerman said his country would not issue a statement about the attack until it was sure of all the facts. But he added: “I can assure you that we know exactly what we hit. … This was no religious site. This was indeed the headquarters of the Hezbollah leadership.”

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. Hezbollah media made no immediate mention of any attack.

Israel has said that one of the objects of its offensive in Lebanon is to eliminate Hezbollah leaders.

A total of 29 people had been reported killed on the Israeli side of the border, including 14 soldiers and 15 civilians.

Saniora also said that about 300 people had died in Lebanon, 1,000 wounded and half a million displaced. But precise casualty figures were difficult to confirm.

In the interview published today in Corriere della Sera, Saniora accused Hezbollah of taking orders from its sponsors Syria and Iran and said the group could only be disarmed with international assistance.

“The important thing now is to restore full Lebanese sovereignty in the south, dismantling any armed militia parallel to the national army,” he said. “The Syrians are inside our home and we are still too weak to defend ourselves. The terrible memories of the civil war are still too alive and no one is ready to take up arms.”

He also was quoted as saying Israel should release Lebanese prisoners and withdraw from the disputed territory of Chebaa Farms to decrease support for Hezbollah.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour criticised the growing death toll, saying the indiscriminate shelling of cities and of nearby military sites was invariably resulting in the deaths of innocent civilians.

“International law demands accountability,” Arbour said in Geneva. “The scale of the killings in the region, and their predictability, could engage the personal criminal responsibility of those involved, particularly those in a position of command and control.”

Hezbollah fired rockets into the Israeli Arab town of Nazareth, where Jesus is said to have spent his boyhood, killing two Arab brothers, aged three and nine as they played.

Saniora, whose weak government has been unable to fulfil a UN directive to disarm Hezbollah and put its army along the border with Israel, pointedly criticised the US position that Israel acts in self-defence.

“Is this what the international community calls self-defence?” a stern-looking Saniora asked a meeting of foreign diplomats, including US Ambassador Jeffrey Feltman. “Is this the price we pay for aspiring to build our democratic institutions?”

The Lebanese leader’s appeal came as international pressure mounted on Israel and the United States to agree to a cease-fire. The rising death toll and scope of the destruction deepened a rift between the US. And Europe, and humanitarian agencies were sounding the alarm over a pending catastrophe with a half million people displaced in Lebanon.

Thousands of foreigners fled in one of the largest evacuation operations since the Second World War.

The Bush administration is giving Israel a tacit green light to take the time it needs to neutralise Hezbollah, but the Europeans fear mounting civilian casualties will play into the hands of militants and weaken Lebanon’s democratically elected government.

The USS Nashville anchored off the coast of Lebanon to evacuate some 1,200 Americans fleeing the fighting. Hundreds of people gathered on the beach just north of Beirut to board a landing craft that would ferry the passengers to the Navy ship.

The Nashville prepared for its voyage as the United States and other countries ramp up their evacuation operations from the war-torn country.

An estimated 13,000 foreign nationals have been evacuated . Denmark leads the way in taking its nationals out of Lebanon, having evacuated 4,100.