Lebanon Toll Passes 200
By Aljazeera
18 July 2006
Aljazeera
At least 23 people have been killed in the latest air strikes by Israeli warplanes in Lebanon, raising the toll there to more than 220.
Israeli aircraft struck targets across Lebanon on Monday, hitting many areas north and east of Beirut that have so far been quiet.
Nine civilians, all from one family and including children, were killed and four wounded in an air strike that destroyed a house in the south Lebanese village of Aitarun. Four others died in strikes elsewhere in the south.
Another strike at a Lebanese army barracks at Jumhur area, east of Beirut, killed 10 Lebanese soldiers and wounded 30.
Aljazeera television reported that Israeli forces had also attacked targets around Zahle, a mainly Christian town in central Lebanon, and attacked ambulances on nearby roads.
Diplomatic efforts have brought no signs of an end to the week-old assaultt that has begun after Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers.
Israel's military action in Lebanon has so far killed at least 220 people, all but 14 of them civilians, and inflicted the heaviest destruction in the country for two decades, with attacks on ports, roads, bridges, factories and petrol stations.
Israel's deputy army chief, Major-General Moshe Kaplinsky, told Army Radio: "The fighting in Lebanon will end within a few weeks. We will not take months.
"We need more time to complete our very clear goals. When we fight terror it is a war that needs to be very accurate, very schematic and it takes time.
"Hezbollah has a very large system of different types of rockets. The [group] still has an ability to fire at the north and residents still feel this. We will do everything to shorten this suffering."
He added that a ground invasion into Lebanon had been considered.
"At this stage we do not think we have to activate massive ground forces into Lebanon but if we have to do this, we will. We are not ruling it out," Kaplinsky said.
Israeli aircraft also struck Beirut's southern suburbs, the northern city of Tripoli as well as two Lebanese army barracks in the Jumhur and Kafarshima areas early on Tuesday.
Television footage showed balls of fire and clouds of smoke billowing from a Lebanese army position east of Beirut. Several soldiers were wounded, a security source said.
Loud explosions caused by raids on Beirut's southern suburb were also heard across the capital.
Previous strikes on the area had destroyed Hezbollah's headquarters.
Raids on the Christian coastal town of Byblos north of Beirut damaged two trucks without inflicting casualties, police said.
Warplanes also hit the eastern town of Baalbek.
Aljazeera's correspondent reported that there was relative calm in south Lebanon on Tuesday morning after the overnight air raids and artillery shelling
Hezbollah fired dozens of rockets at the Israeli city of Haifa on Monday, and medics said a three-storey building collapsed, wounding two people. Israel closed Haifa's port.
Another wave of rockets struck deep inside Israel, including the town of Afula 50km south of the border. One rocket landed next to a hospital in Safad, wounding six people.Hezbollah's attacks on a naval vessel off Beirut and the firing of hundreds of rockets at northern Israel have killed 24 people so far, 12 of them civilians.
As Tel Aviv pledged to press on with its campaign, thousands of foreigners fled from Lebanon - some by road to Syria, others seeking places on US and European ships.
Fighting erupted after Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shia resistance group, backed by Syria and Iran and part of Lebanon's government, seized two Israeli soldiers and killed eight in a cross-border raid on northern Israel on July 12.
Lebanon has repeatedly called for an immediate ceasefire, but world powers have said any solution must include the release of the two soldiers, which Hezbollah wants to swap for prisoners in Israeli jails.
Kaplinsky said the two missing soldiers, along with a third, who was captured by Palestinian fighters on June 25, were thought to be alive and safe.
"We know that all three are alive. We know who is holding them and, as I said, we will do everything to bring them home," he said.
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