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Israel intensifies air strikes
28/07/2006 07:25 - (SA)
Nayla Razzouk
Beirut - Israel has intensified its deadly offensive against Lebanon, calling up thousands more reservists after claiming it had won the green light from the world to crush Hezbollah.
As Israeli warplanes struck over 130 targets across Lebanon overnight and battles raged for a key border town, Israel said it would limit ground offensives after nine soldiers were killed on Thursday in the heaviest losses in 16 days of warfare.
At least 11 people were killed in Lebanon as warplanes bombarded Hezbollah strongholds in the south and east, bringing the death toll to 420 people in Lebanon alone as the conflict entered its 16th day.
Authorisation
"In Rome we in effect obtained the authorisation to continue our operations until Hezbollah is no longer present in southern Lebanon," Israeli justice minister Haim Ramon said, referring to a 15-nation conference in the Italian capital that failed to agree on a ceasefire call.
However, Finnish foreign minister Erkki Tuomioja, whose country currently holds the rotating EU presidency, said Israel had misread the outcome.
"It is their interpretation and it is wrong," said the minister, who held talks in Israel on Thursday and was due in Beirut on Friday.
UN shock at killing of peacekeepers
The UN security council expressed shock over an Israeli attack on a UN observer post in Lebanon which killed four peacekeepers, but made no condemnation in its statement, due to US refusal.
"The security council is deeply shocked and distressed by the firing by the Israeli defence forces on a United Nations observer post in southern Lebanon on July 25," said the statement passed unanimously by the 15-nation council.
Tuesday's attack at Khiam in southern Lebanon killed unarmed military observers from Austria, Canada, China and Finland.
Air strikes intensified
At an emergency meeting, Israel's security cabinet decided to intensify air strikes but restrict its more risky ground operations to setting up a border buffer zone of a few kilometres in south Lebanon.
Israel has however insisted there was no question of another occupation of its northern neighbour, with memories still raw of the quagmire that resulted from its 1982 invasion.
The cabinet also decided to call up three divisions of reservists, which could mean the deployment of as many as 30 000 more troops.
'Enormous damage'
Army chief Dan Halutz said "enormous" damage had been inflicted on Hezbollah and that hundreds of fighters had been hit. Hezbollah says it has lost 30 of its men, while 51 Israelis have been killed, the majority of them soldiers.
Israel insists it will not halt its assault until two soldiers captured by Hezbollah on July 12 are freed and the militia is disarmed, but the most powerful army in the Middle East has met with bitter resistance from Shi'ite militants.
- AFP
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