Israeli attacks crush Lebanese towns

Israeli planes and artillery attacks today hit Hezbollah positions and crushed houses and roads in southern Lebanon, killing up to 12 people.

Hezbollah said it fired a new kind of rocket, which landed deeper inside Israel than hundreds of other strikes in 17 days of fighting.

The United Nations decided to move 50 observers from their posts to better the protected positions of 2,000 lightly armed UN peacekeepers along the Israeli-Lebanon border.

The move comes days after Israeli bombs hit a UN observer station, killing four.

Also, the United States evacuated about 500 more US citizens from Beirut aboard a chartered cruise ship, believed to the last US-organised mass departure for Americans. Some 15,000 US citizens have now left Lebanon.

The European Union said it has finished evacuating most of its 20,000 citizens who wanted to leave Lebanon, and will now help evacuate nationals of poorer, non-EU countries.

Heavy fighting guerrillas flared in the small pocket of southern Lebanon where Iraeli ground troops have tried all week to take a key town, Israeli TV said.

Hezbollah said it attacked troops in a nearby village that the Israeli military said it secured last weekend and claimed five Israelis were wounded.

Diplomatic efforts to end the crisis emerged on several fronts. US allies pressed Washington to speed efforts to secure a cease-fire in the crisis, which erupted after Hezbollah guerrillas captured two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid July 12, sparking Israel’s harsh retaliation.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, attending a regional security conference in Malaysia, announced plans to return to the Middle East after visits to Lebanon and Israel earlier in the week.

Israeli media said she will arrive in Israel tomorrow night and meet with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Sunday. There was no word on whether she would go to Beirut.

Rice has argued against an immediate truce, calling for a more “enduring” arrangement that would end Hezbollah’s control of southern Lebanon and diminish the influence of Syria and Iran in Lebanon’s affairs.

During a meeting on Wednesday in Rome, Rice faced strong demand from European governments for fighting to end now, but a lack of consensus won more time for Israel’s military campaign.

President Bush has suggested he would support the offensive for as long as it takes to cripple Hezbollah. He also sharply condemned Iran for giving the guerrillas military support – a charge Tehran denied today.

In France, President Jacques Chirac said his country will press for the rapid adoption of a UN Security Council resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire in Lebanon, his office said.

Meanwhile, Hezbollah announced it used a new rocket, the Khaibar-1 – named after the site of a famed battle between Isla’s prophet Mohammed and Jewish tribes in the Arabian peninsula – to strike the northern Israeli town of Afula. Guerrilla rockets have hit near town before, but this attack was the deepest yet. Israeli police said five rockets hit outside Afula but caused no injuries.

The strike came two days after Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah vowed his guerrillas would fire rockets beyond Haifa, Israel’s third-largest city, which has been hit repeatedly in the conflict.

Israeli authorities said the rocket was likely a renamed Fajr-5, an Iranian-made weapon with a range to hit the northern outskirts. It would be the first time Hezbollah has launched a Fajr-5 after firing hundreds of smaller Katyusha rockets into northern Israel.

The rockets that hit outside Afula carried 220lbs of explosives – though the Fajr-5 is capable of carrying twice that amount. Hezbollah has hit Haifa in deadly strikes using the Fajr-3, which has a somewhat shorter range and 220lbs is around its maximum payload.

Guerrillas also fired 96 smaller rockets at several northern Israeli towns, the Israeli army said. One rocket hit the top floor window of the main hospital in the Israeli border town of Nahariya. No casualties were reported in the rocket fire.

Last night and this morning, Israeli warplanes struck 130 targets in Lebanon, including a Hezbollah base in the Bekaa Valley, where long-range rockets were stored, 57 Hezbollah structures, six missile-launching sites and six communication facilities, Israel said.

The bombardmen – along with artillery pounding the south – often hit populated areas and caused casualties.

One airstrike flattened a house in the village of Hadatha, and six people inside were believed dead or wounded, the Lebanese state news agency reported. Hezbollah’s al-Manar TV said all six were dead.

Missiles fired by Israeli jets also destroyed three buildings in the village of Kfar Jouz near the market town of Nabatiyeh. A Jordanian was killed with a Lebanese couple when their shelter collapsed, Lebanese security officials said.

Nine people, including children, were wounded in the raid, which apparently targeted an apartment belonging to a Hezbollah activist. Civil defence teams in Kfar Jouz struggled to rescue people believed buried under the rubble of a collapsed three-floor structure, witnesses said.

Three women were killed in strikes on their homes in southern villages of Talouseh, Sheitiyeh and Bazouriyeh – Nasrallah’s hometown, security officials said.

Israel fired more than 40 artillery shells at the village of Arnoun just outside Nabatiyeh, next to the Crusader-era Beaufort Castle, which has a commanding view of the border area, witnesses said. Israeli artillery also hit a convoy evacuating villagers from Rmeish, lightly wounding a driver and a Lebanese cameraman for German TV news.

At least 443 people have been killed in Lebanon in the fighting, most of them civilians, according to a Health Ministry count Thursday based on bodies taken to hospitals, plus deaths Friday confirmed by security forces. But Lebanon’s health minister estimated yesterday that as many as Lebanese 600 civilians have been killed, with other victims buried in rubble.

On the Israeli side, 33 soldiers have died in fighting, and Hezbollah rocket attacks on northern Israel have killed 19 civilians, the Israeli army said.

The army said today that Israeli troops have killed about 200 Hezbollah guerrillas, but Hezbollah has reported only 35 casualties.

Israeli television reported heavy fighting today around Bint Jbail, where the Israeli military suffered its worst casualties in a single battle of the campaign, with nine soldiers killed in and near the town Wednesday.

Hezbollah said its guerrillas attacked Israeli troops on a ridge overlooking Bint Jbail and in Maroun al-Ras, a nearby villages that Israeli troops overran last weekend. It said five Israeli soldiers were wounded. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli army.

Israeli troops appeared to have pulled back from some positions around Bint Jbail today in preparation of a new assault on the town, which they have fought to take since Sunday, said an official with UN peacekeepers, Ryszard Morczynski. He did not have details on the extent of pullback.

Bin Jbail has the largest Shiite community along the border; it was known as the “capital of the resistance” during Israel’s 1982-2000 occupation because of its vehement support for the Shiite Hezbollah.