Beirut – As diplomats moved toward a cease-fire at the United Nations, Israeli warplanes and artillery intensified their pounding of Hezbollah targets across southern Lebanon on Sunday, killing a dozen civilians and several Lebanese soldiers.
In a fierce retaliation, Hezbollah fighters fired more than 160 rockets into northern Israel, killing three civilians in Haifa and 12 army reservists just south of the border.
The rocket that killed the reservists “was a direct hit,” said Maj. Svika Golan, a spokesman for the Israeli army’s northern command, adding that the rocket was packed with ball bearings to inflict maximum carnage.
Officials in Haifa, about 18 miles south of the border, said the early-evening barrage sent rockets crashing into a neighborhood, burying residents in the rubble. A woman was killed when a rocket smashed into her house, and two others died after being taken to a hospital. Dozens of people were wounded, the officials said.
The Israeli army later said it attacked the Lebanese town of Qana, destroying the launchers that fired the six rockets into Haifa.
The stepped-up air war was matched by repeated clashes on the ground as Hezbollah guerrillas attacked Israeli invasion forces backed by battle tanks moving to control the small villages that dot the hills along Lebanon’s southern border. Hezbollah, a militant Shiite Muslim movement, announced it damaged four tanks and caused an unknown number of Israeli casualties while three of its own fighters were killed.
With casualties mounting on both sides – the rocket strikes caused the highest Israeli death toll in a single day since the war began 26 days ago – the rising spiral of attack and retaliation risked overtaking the still-unsettled diplomatic efforts to arrange a halt to the fighting.
Five of the Lebanese civilian deaths occurred in the same extended family when Israeli rockets slammed into two neighboring houses in the village of Ansar, near the market town of Nabatiyeh about 8 miles north of the border, according to Lebanese media, citing local police.
Three Lebanese were killed near Naqourah, on the border as it reaches the Mediterranean Sea, they said, and three others were killed in bombing raids in the village of al-Jibbain.
Roads in the coastal city of Tyre and its hinterland were paralyzed after Israeli aircraft killed a Lebanese soldier standing on a road, fired near a motorcycle and struck a car close to a U.N. convoy, witnesses and U.N. officials said. Several more soldiers were killed in other airstrikes, the military reported.
Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, in an interview, said a draft U.N. Security Council resolution proposed Saturday by the United States and France is “impractical” because it would leave Israeli forces in southern Lebanon with Hezbollah fighters nearby until an international force can be organized and deployed. That, he said, sounds like a recipe for more bloodshed.
“So what is it in fact doing?” he asked. “It is putting flammable material next to the fire.”
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert convened his Cabinet but declined to respond publicly to the proposed resolution.
“We won’t respond to the draft because the less said the better,” he said, according to a senior government official who attended the meeting. “When the decision has been made by the Security Council, then the government will convene and decide if and how we should respond.”
Siniora, who according to aides met twice Sunday with U.S. Ambassador Jeffrey Feltman, said he has proposed changes that would include the immediate dispatch of 15,000 Lebanese soldiers to the border area along with a 2,000- member international force under the aegis of the current United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon.
Their arrival, to guarantee that no Hezbollah fighters would be allowed south of the Litani River, would be nearly simultaneous with a cease-fire and a withdrawal of all Israeli forces now north of the border, he said.
Siniora said he discussed his ideas in phone calls with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice late Saturday, a phone conversation with Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain and diplomatic exchanges Sunday via Feltman in Beirut. So far, however, there has been no response, he said.
When the resolution reaches its final stage at the United Nations, Siniora said, he will take it to his government, including its Hezbollah ministers, and seek their endorsement if the conditions are ripe. In the meantime, he said, Lebanon cannot embrace the resolution as it stands.
Nabih Berri, head of the Amal party and the main conduit for communication with Hezbollah, said the cease-fire must be accompanied by a total Israeli withdrawal, a pledge to end Israeli occupation of the disputed Shebaa farms area and a prisoner exchange between Israel and Lebanon.
U.S. analysis
What’s happening: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice described a draft U.N. cease-fire resolution as a first step to stop violence in the Middle East.
What’s ahead: She said it cannot solve the problems in Lebanon, and she expects more violence.
What needs to happen: Rice said the Lebanese government must extend its authority into the south of the country so the militant Islamic group Hezbollah does not have control.
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Deadliest days of the Mideast fighting
A look at some of the deadliest fighting since Israel began its offensive July 12 after Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers:
July 14: Hezbollah hits an Israeli warship blockading the Lebanese coast, killing four sailors.
July 16: Rocket fired by Hezbollah hits Haifa, killing eight Israelis.
July 18: Israeli warplanes strike an army base outside Beirut, killing 16 people in bombings.
July 25: Officials say Israeli bombs killed six people in a south Lebanon town.
July 26: Eight Israelis die fighting for control of Bint Jbail; a ninth Israeli is killed in the fight for the nearby town of Maroun al-Ras.
July 28: Israeli warplanes and artillery attacks hit Hezbollah positions and crush houses and roads in southern Lebanon, killing up to 12 people.
July 30: Israeli airstrike kills 28 in Qana, Lebanon.
Wednesday: In Lebanon, 16 killed overnight during an Israeli commando raid.
Thursday: Rockets pound northern Israel, killing eight people.
Friday: Four Israeli missiles slam into a refrigerated warehouse where farm workers were loading vegetables near the Lebanon-Syria border, killing at least 28 people. Hezbollah rockets kill three Israeli Arabs.
Saturday: Fighting across Lebanon kills at least eight Lebanese and two Israeli soldiers. Hezbollah rocket volley kills three women in northern Israel.
Sunday: Hezbollah rocket attacks kill 12 Israeli reserve soldiers in Kfar Giladi and at least three people in Haifa. Israeli warplanes and artillery cause at least 13 deaths in Lebanon.
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
