  |
Israeli air attacks kill nine in Lebanon
By Jihad Siqlawi
AFP
TYRE, Lebanon
Petroleumworld.com 08 09 06
Israeli warplanes killed nine people, including five children, early on Wednesday in raids on Lebanon as the Jewish state showed no sign of easing its blistering air campaign in which over 1,000 people, mostly civilians, have died.
The Israeli military said its air force had carried out overnight over 100 raids around Beirut and the south of Lebanon targeting what it called "Hezbollah buildings", destroying four rocket launchers and targeting several launch sites.
Hassan Sader -- a political member of Lebanon's Shiite Hezbollah -- his wife and his five children died under the rubble when the four-storey building where they lived collapsed after a bombing raid by Israeli planes, police said.
Two people were killed and 15 wounded in an Israeli strike on the southern Lebanon Palestinian refugee camp of Ain Al Hilweh, the first time Israel has bombarded the Palestinian refugee camp.
The camp is the largest in Lebanon and home to some 50,000 people.
Two shells fell near the home of Colonel Munir Maqdah, a radical military chief of the Fatah movement in Lebanon, Palestinian sources said.
Victims were pulled out of a house destroyed by the strike in the north of the camp near Sidon, the main city of south Lebanon. They were taken to three hospitals as rescue efforts continued to try to find any others trapped inside.
Lebanese newspapers on Wednesday printed unsparing pictures of the dead being pulled from the rubble of residential buildings in the Shiyah district in south Beirut after 31 were killed in Israeli strikes late on Monday, with the toll set to rise further.
Twenty-three people have also been killed in the past two days in raids on the village of Ghaziye, including a strike on Tuesday just 500 metres away from where the funerals were taking place for victims of the previous air raid.
In Israel, the security cabinet was to meet to discuss a proposal for widening the ground offensive in southern Lebanon to include the area below the Litani river -- a zone that includes the southern port of Tyre where an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 people were still living.
On Tuesday, Israeli aircraft dropped leaflets on south Lebanon warning that the military would strike any vehicle travelling south of the Litani river.
In the past four weeks, Israel has poured thousands of soldiers into an area stretching from Bayadda on the coast in the west to the village of Kfar Kila in the east. It has run into fierce Hezbollah resistance.
An army spokeswoman said 15 Israeli soldiers were wounded on Wednesday in fighting with the Hezbollah militia in southern Lebanon. Most of the fighting was near the village of Taibe.
Ten soldiers suffered light wounds but the spokeswoman did not elaborate on the condition of the other five.
A total of 65 Israeli soldiers have been killed in fighting since the launch of a massive land, sea and air offensive in southern Lebanon following the July 12 capture of two soldiers by the Hezbollah militia.
The army has advanced in places up to eight kilometres inside Lebanon in its ground offensive, aimed at eradicating Hezbollah fighters from the border area and thwarting rocket attacks.
On Tuesday, a total of four Israeli soldiers were killed in clashes with Hezbollah fighters in south Lebanon, the army said.
Those clashes occurred in Bint Jbeil, a key border town and Hezbollah stronghold which has been the scene of the deadliest fighting between Israeli troops and Shiite guerrillas.
AFP 09 0804 GMT 08 06
Copyright ©2006 AFP. All Rights Reserved.
Your
feedback is important to us!
We invite all our readers to share with us
their views and comments about this article.
Write to editor@petroleumworld.com
Any
question or suggestions, please write to:
editor@petroleumworld.com
Best
Viewed with IE
5.01+
Windows
NT 4.0, '95, '98 and ME +/ 800x600 pixels