Israel raids over Lebanon and Palestina

[Menydh]

Israeli air raids in Lebanon kill three

Al Jazeera
July 14, 2006

Israeli air raids on suburbs of the Lebanese capital killed three people and wounded 55 overnight, police said on Friday.

Israel's widening military offensive brought to at least 50 the number of Lebanese civilians killed since Wednesday - when Israel attacked Lebanon to rescue two Israeli soldiers captured by Hezbollah fighters - said Lebanese security officials talking on conditions of anonymity because they are not authorised to speak to the media.

Residents of southern Beirut heard the impact of at least four Israeli missiles early on Friday and the Lebanese army responded with anti-aircraft fire.

Hezbollah's Al-Manar TV and other local stations said a bridge in the area was hit. Security sources said the main highway to the airport and the south was also hit.

Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader, has his office and residence in the district of Haret Hreik in south Beirut. Hezbollah's Shura Council - its decision-making body - and their TV station are also nearby.

Israeli jets dropped leaflets on Thursday warning people to stay away from Hezbollah offices.

Police said a fuel storage tank at a power station on the coast was destroyed during the strikes.

Hezbollah targets on the outskirts of Hermel, near the border with Syria, were also hit by Israeli planes, police said.


[source]

[Menydh]

Israel bombs Beirut airport again

Al Jazeera
July 14, 2006

Israeli forces have bombed Beirut's international airport in the fourth raid in 24 hours.

The attack came shortly after six aircraft were evacuated to Cyprus, after contacts between Fuad Siniora, the Lebanese prime minister, and Jeffrey Feltman, the US ambassador to Lebanon.

Five aeroplanes of the national carrier Middle East Airlines and a private aircraft owned by Najib Mikati, the former Lebanese prime minister, left the airport after Siniora was assured that the aircraft would not be attacked by Israel.

A Lebanese official denied that a terminal had been hit and said that only runways had been attacked.

Israel has imposed an air and sea blockade on Lebanon and also hit the main highway between Beirut and Damascus, virtually cutting off its northern neighbour from the outside world.

Israeli air raids on suburbs of the Lebanese capital killed three people and wounded 55 overnight, police said on Friday.


[source]

[Menydh]

Israeli shelling kills Palestinian in Gaza

Al Jazeera
July 14, 2006

A Palestinian has been killed by Israeli troops firing a tank shell at his truck in Gaza.

Palestinians said the truck took a wrong turn and ended up near Israeli forces in central Gaza early on Friday. A tank then fired a shell which hit the vehicle.

The driver escaped but a passenger was wounded and later died.

The Israeli military said the truck had been driven within 30 metres of an Israeli position and the driver had ignored orders to stop before the shell was fired.

Israeli planes later destroyed a bridge in the central Gaza Strip, wounding a civilian, Palestinian security sources said. It was the fourth bridge destroyed by Israel since the offensive in Gaza began two weeks ago.

Offices belonging to Hamas politicians and alleged militant training camps in northern Gaza were also hit.

Rotating forces

On Friday, witnesses reported that Israeli tanks were moving in southern Gaza. The military said they were rotating forces in and out of the territory.

More than 80 Palestinians have been killed during Israeli incursions into Gaza which Tel Aviv says is to rescue a soldier captured in a cross-border raid on June 25 and stop fighters from firing rockets into Israel.

Hamas politician Mushir al-Masri said Israel's offensive would not achieve its goals. "The Zionists are mistaken if they think that solving the case of their captured soldier can come through escalation. This case is not gong to be solved for free."

Israel has said it will not negotiate or release prisoners in exchange for the soldier, Corporal Gilad Shalit.


[source]

[Menydh]

Israel pounds Lebanon

Reuters
July 15, 2006

Israeli air strikes killed at least 27 civilians on Saturday, pounding Lebanon for a fourth straight day to punish it for letting Syrian- and Iranian-backed Hizbollah fighters threaten northern Israel.

President Bush said Syria should persuade Hizbollah to stop cross-border attacks from Lebanon's mainly Shi'ite Muslim south.

An Israeli missile wrecked a van near the southern port of Tire, killing 15 passengers and wounding six, police said. The van was carrying families fleeing the village of Marwaheen after Israeli loudspeaker warnings to leave their homes.

Israeli aircraft also bombed a Hizbollah office in southern Beirut's Haret Hreik district, and attacked roads, bridges and petrol stations in north, east and south Lebanon, killing at least 12 people and wounding 32, security sources said.

Israel's campaign, launched after Hizbollah captured two Israeli soldiers and killed eight on Wednesday, has killed 93 people, all but two civilians, and paralyzed Lebanon's economy.

It aims not just to force Hizbollah to free the soldiers, but to destroy its ability to launch rocket attacks on northern Israel, where four civilians have been killed this week.

"The best way to stop the violence is for Hizbollah to lay down its arms and to stop attacking. And therefore I call upon Syria to exert influence over Hizbollah," Bush told a joint news conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Israel's aerial assault on Lebanon has drawn mounting world criticism but the White House has said President Bush would not press Israel to halt its military operation.


[source]

[Menydh]

Israeli raid hits Lebanon-Syria border

Reuters
July 15, 2006

Israeli warplanes fired four rockets at a border crossing point between Lebanon and Syria on Saturday, witnesses said.

No further details were immediately available. A Syrian army position is located in the area.


[source]

[Menydh]

The announcement of Bush that he will not press Israel to stop the attacks, followed by this just hot off the press news that Israel has launched rockets at the border with Syria smells to rotten.

I am thinking of the possibility that Israel might be trying to draw Syria into the conflict, to give the Americans the perfect excuse to invade Syria as they wanted to do since (or before?) the invasion of Iraq.

[Menydh]

Israel says it has only bombed in Lebanese territory

Reuters
July 15, 2006

The Israeli military said on Saturday it had only carried out bombing raids on Lebanese territory and not inside Syria after reports of attacks very close to the Syrian border.

"It's very important to understand that we have only targeted bridges and access points in Lebanon," an army spokeswoman said. "We have not bombed anything in Syria."

Earlier witnesses said Israeli warplanes had bombed a Lebanese-Syrian border crossing point, indicating that air strikes were straying close to Syrian territory.


[source]

[Menydh]

Israeli missiles hit house in Gaza

Al Jazeera
July 15, 2006

Israeli air strikes have hit a house in Gaza City, killing one person and injuring eight.

The dead man was 33-year-old Omar Yunis and that the injured were mostly women and children, the youngest an eight-month-old baby, Aljazeera's correspondent said.

Two missiles struck the house in al-Nafaq Street.

The Israeli army said Palestinian factions were storing and manufacturing weapons in the house, Aljazeera's correspondent said.

The attack follows the death of an 18-year-old Palestinian in an Israeli helicopter strike in a village near Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip.

Scaled back

Israel withdrew tanks and bulldozers from most areas of central Gaza on Friday but is continuing an air campaign to secure the release of a captured soldier.

Tanks and armoured jeeps that were positioned in the centre of the Gaza Strip near the Deir al-Balah refugee camp and the town of Khan Yunis have pulled out of the area.

Ahmed al-Kurd, the Hamas mayor of Deir al-Balah, said at least 30 hectares of farmland and orchard, largely olive trees, had been devastated by the Israeli troops. He said about 20 homes had been damaged or destroyed.

An army spokeswoman said the only place where Israeli ground forces remained in Gaza was Dahaniya, in the south, near the former international airport that was destroyed by the army during the second Palestinian uprising.

Earlier on Saturday, Israel attacked the Palestinian economy ministry.

The building caught fire as a result of the air strike, causing severe damage. The raid followed a similar strike on the Gaza building of the foreign ministry on Thursday.

The offices of the prime minister and interior minister have also been destroyed. The second attack destroyed a bridge near the Bureij refugee camp.

Palestinian officials said there were no casualties in either raid.

In a separate incident, Aljazeera reported that a Palestinian was killed on Saturday morning by Israeli fire in the town al-Qarara, north of khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip.

More than 80 Palestinians have been killed in air and ground operations in Gaza.


[source]

[Menydh]

Syria not attacked by Israel: Syrian official

Reuters
July 15, 2006

Syria was not targeted in any attack by Israel on Saturday, a Syrian information official said.

"No Syrian installation, military or civilian, has been targeted in any part of the country," the official told Reuters.

The Israeli military said earlier it had only carried out bombing raids on Lebanese territory and not inside Syria after reports of attacks very close to the Syrian border.


[source]

[Menydh]

Bush demands Syria stop Hizbollah attacks

Reuters
July 15, 2006

President Bush demanded on Saturday that Syria rein in Hizbollah attacks on Israel but Russia's Vladimir Putin said Israel's military response should be "balanced".

Hizbollah's attacks from Lebanese territory, Israel's retaliatory bombing raids and the resulting threat to Lebanon's fragile government emerged as a top priority for Group of Eight leaders at their St Petersburg summit.

At a joint news conference, Bush again declined to urge Israel to curb its attacks on Hizbollah targets in Lebanon, a position at odds with those of French President Jacques Chirac and the European Union, who have called Israel's action disproportionate.

Bush laid the blame for this week's upsurge in Middle East violence squarely on Hizbollah guerrillas for firing rockets into Israel and abducting Israeli soldiers. In response, Israel has bombed Beirut's airport and blockaded its port.

"The best way to stop the violence is for Hizbollah to lay down its arms and to stop attacking. And therefore I call upon Syria to exert influence over Hizbollah," Bush said.

Putin, whose government has expressed concern about the region sliding into war, said he agreed that Hizbollah's actions were "absolutely unacceptable".

"This is all true, and in this context, we consider Israel's concerns to be justified," the Russian president said. But, he said, "the use of force should be balanced".

"In any case, bloodshed should stop as soon as possible," Putin, host of the G8 summit, added.


[source]

[Menydh]

News are coming through fast. It's been barely 30 minutes since the first news on Israel's attack near the border with Syria and the last news item.

[Savage]

Israel kills Lebanese civilians

Israel renewed its aggression against the Lebanese territories early Saturday, launching a new round of air raids that killed at least 27 civilians who were fleeing southern border areas, and injured many more, BBC reported.

Police sources confirmed that Israeli missile hit a van near the southern port of Tire that was carrying families fleeing the village of Marwaheen, killing 15 people and wounding six. Source

[Menydh]

Israel-Hezbollah conflict widens

IHT
July 16, 2006

Eight people were killed and more than 20 were wounded Sunday when a rocket fired from Lebanon by Hezbollah hit a train station in the northern coastal town of Haifa, according to Israeli police, army and medical officials. The strike on the maintenance hangar at the station marked the highest number of casualties in a single rocket strike by Hezbollah in more than two decades of firing rockets.

It was also the first time that Hezbollah has fired its Fajr-3 rocket, which has a heavier warhead than the Katyusha, at Israel since the current conflict began, the officials said.

The rocket, one of many that rained down on Israel today, scored a direct hit through the roof of the maintenance hangar just after 9 a.m., when Israelis many were going to work. Blood and debris swamped the impact site in the cavernous interior, and the windows of the two trains inside were smashed and theirs sides charred.

Many of the small towns in Israel's north had been transformed into virtual ghost towns as residents fled the barrage of strikes from across the border, but people in Haifa had been feeling relatively secure going about their business in Israel's third biggest city.

Early today, Israeli warplanes bombed the Beirut suburbs for hours.

Many residents on both sides of the Israel-Lebanon border have been fleeing the frontier to avoid the heavy shooting. The fighting erupted Wednesday with a Hezbollah attack that led to the capture of two Israeli soldiers. Nine Israeli soldiers have been killed in the fighting.

[...]

Some 30 Lebanese were killed in various attacks on Saturday. Over the past four days, more than 85 Lebanese have died, most of them civilians, and more than 200 have been wounded, according to Lebanese officials. Hezbollah rockets have killed four Israeli civilians and wounded more than 150 since the barrage began Wednesday.


[source]

[Menydh]

25 Lebanese die in fresh Israeli raids

Al Jazeera
July 16, 2006

Israeli warplanes have killed at least 25 civilians and wounded 33 others in a series of new air attacks on southern Lebanon.

One air strike killed at least 10 people in the coastal city of Tyre on Sunday evening. Another raid destroyed several houses near the Israeli border and killed at least 16 civilians.

The latest deaths mean that Israel's offensive against Hezbollah and Lebanon has killed at least 130 people since Wednesday.

Most of the civilian victims of today's attacks died when their homes were struck by Israeli bombs or missiles, Lebanese police said.

[...]

Israel's strategy

Israel's minister for internal security, Avi Dichter said the raids aimed to put pressure on Lebanon's government to act against Hezbollah.

"Tens of thousands of Lebanese who will flee towards the north will create the right pressure on Hezbollah," Dichter told ministers during Israel's weekly cabinet m