Haifa, Israel – Israel battered targets across Lebanon on Sunday after a rocket fired by the radical Shiite group Hezbollah struck a railroad yard and killed eight workers as other rockets rained deep into the Galilee region in northern Israel.
The Israeli assault killed at least 28 people in south Lebanon, including eight Lebanese holding Canadian citizenship, and continued today. An Israeli rocket blew up a Lebanese army position near the northern town of Tripoli, killing eight soldiers, and another strike sparked a large fire in Beirut’s port, The Associated Press reported.
The Sunday-morning rocket attack effectively shut down Haifa, Israel’s third-largest city, and sent thousands of northern Israel residents fleeing for safety along southbound highways.
Israeli defense minister Amir Peretz declared a 48-hour state of emergency in the north, and security officials warned residents as far south as Tel Aviv that they might be vulnerable to Hezbollah’s new longer-range rockets, two of which hit the cities of Nazareth and Afula, which is 25 miles from the Lebanese border. It was the deepest strike yet inside Israel; no injuries were reported.
Israeli warplanes, meanwhile, hammered south Beirut and other targets across south Lebanon.
Israel expanded the second front of its military operation against radical Islamic groups operating along its northern and southern borders Sunday by pushing tanks and troops into the Gaza Strip, setting off fighting that killed at least five Palestinian gunmen.
“Nothing will deter us, whatever far-reaching ramifications regarding our relations on the northern border and in the region there may be,” Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said before his weekly Cabinet meeting. “We have no intention to give in to these threats. We know that many tests yet await us. Our enemies are trying to disrupt life in Israel – they will fail. The public is strong and united in this struggle.”
The rocket attack in Haifa and the intensifying airstrikes in Lebanon marked an escalation of a conflict that began last week when a Hezbollah cross-border raid resulted in the deaths of eight Israeli soldiers and the capture of two others. Israel implicated Syria and Iran in Sunday’s rocket attack here that military officials said showed the new reach of Hezbollah’s arsenal.
Olmert holds the Lebanese government responsible for the actions of Hezbollah, an Islamic movement with a military wing that rose to prominence fighting the 18-year Israeli occupation of south Lebanon that ended in May 2000. The U.N. Security Council has demanded that Hezbollah give up its arms, a resolution whose terms Israel is demanding be fulfilled before it stops its airstrikes and artillery fire into Lebanon.
Israeli forces operating in Gaza, where the military wing of Hamas helped capture an Israeli soldier in a June 25 cross-border raid, are seeking also to win the soldier’s release, stop rocket fire into southern Israel and weaken the radical Islamic movement’s hold on the Palestinian government.
Israel has said its actions are in self-defense, but the growing number of civilian casualties in Lebanon could prompt calls from other countries, including allies, that it suspend the operations. The Bush administration has called on Israel to show restraint, and U.N. officials called for an immediate cease-fire.
The Lebanese health ministry said about 150 Lebanese, nearly all of them civilians, have been killed since the fighting began Wednesday while more than 400 have been wounded. Four Israeli civilians had been killed by Hezbollah rocket fire until Sunday’s attack, which killed eight government employees of Israel Railways and wounded more than two dozen others.
“When the Zionists behave like there are no rules and no limits to the confrontation, it is our right to behave in the same way,” Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader, said in a Sunday address televised on the movement’s al-Manar satellite channel.
Nasrallah said five days of Israeli attacks had not diminished Hezbollah’s capability and promised Israel would face more “surprises” if it kept up airstrikes. He said the group was faced with “no choice” in attacking Haifa, about 22 miles south of the Lebanese border.
He called for backing from Arab and Muslim leaders, most of whom he said have failed to express sufficient support.
“Hezbollah is not fighting a battle for Hezbollah or even for Lebanon,” Nasrallah said. “We are now fighting a battle for the Islamic nation. Where does the nation stand on this battle?”
Developments in latest conflicts in the Middle East
- Hezbollah rocket from Lebanon kills eight railyard workers in Haifa, Israel. Other rockets rain down on northern Israel, including at least four Iranian-made Fajr missiles, Hezbollah’s first use of the weapon. More than two dozen are wounded.
- Israel retaliates with airstrikes across Lebanon, including Tripoli and Hezbollah strongholds in the eastern town of Baalbek. In Tyre, at least nine people were killed and more than 50 wounded in an attack on the civil defense building. Eight other Lebanese civilians, all Canadian citizens, die as their home in the border town of Aitaroun is hit.
- Israel also strikes Beirut’s main electricity plant, cutting off power to parts of the city and southern Lebanon.
- Israel pushes tanks and troops into the Gaza Strip. At least five Palestinian gunmen are killed.
- Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader, promises Israel will face more “surprises” and tries to rally the Arab world around Hezbollah, saying the battle was an opportunity to deal Israel a “historic defeat.”
- Iran and Syria, prime supporters of Hezbollah and Hamas, deny Israel’s claim that they had provided advanced missile technology to Hezbollah.
- U.S. planners arrive in Lebanon to organize evacuation for any of the 8,000 or more Americans seeking to leave. Other countries send military aircraft and ships to evacuate citizens.
- World leaders gathered at the Group of Eight summit in Russia put aside their differences to call on Islamic militias to halt their rocket attacks on Israel and on Israeli forces to end their military response.
- The United Nations, the European Union and Italy also push ahead with separate efforts Sunday to try to end the fighting.
- Iran threatens “unimaginable damage” to Israel if Syria were attacked, and its supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei says Hezbollah was winning its fight against Israel and would not disarm. Iran’s foreign minister heads to Damascus on Sunday for talks.
