Rockets Hit Southern Israeli City in 'Major Escalation'
Thursday , July 13, 2006

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Two rockets hit Haifa, Israeli's third biggest city, early Thursday evening, the deepest strike into Israel so far in what was called a "major, major escalation" in the ongoing battle between Lebanon and Israel by an Israeli official.
Hezbollah guerillas had been threatening such a strike on the city deep within Israelis borders if Israel targeted Beirut or its southern suburbs but denied responsibility for the attack. No injuries were immediately reported.
"Israel's objective is to win this war," said Daniel Ayalon, Israel's ambassador to the United States, who spoke at the National Press Club in Washington.
Earlier Thursday rockets fired in the northern Israeli town of Nahariya hit a group of journalists, injuring at least one person.
An Associated Press photographer was standing with the group when the rocket hit, but was not injured.
Israeli warplanes attacked a Lebanese army air base near the Syrian border, the first strike on the Lebanese army in Israel's fight with Hezbollah guerrillas that started after Hezbollah took two Israeli solders captive in a high-stakes bid to free Lebanon prisoners. The attack followed an intense strike on Lebanon’s airport, an attack that could draw the Lebanese army into Israel's war with Hezbollah guerrillas.
More than 50 people have died in violence following the capture of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah, which launched more than 80 rockets and mortars into Israel on Thursday.
Israeli jets dropped two bombs on the runway at the Rayak air base in the eastern Bekaa Valley, damaging it, police said. There were no reports of casualties.
Hezbollah guerrillas, who are backed by Iran, seized the soldiers Wednesday in a cross-border raid. Israel has since attacked Lebanon by air and sea and has sent in troops to look for the captured soldiers.
Israel's foreign ministry said Thursday that Lebanese guerillas holding the two soldiers captive are trying to transfer them to Iran. Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev did not disclose the source of his information.
Iran denied the suggestions, saying Jerusalem was "talking absurdities," Reuters reported.
"I strongly deny such reports," Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said. "Because of its desperation and increasing isolation in the world and because of the tension and crisis created inside Israel, it is now talking absurdities."
Hezbollah guerrillas fired three rockets at the northern Israeli border town of Safed, wounding six people and killing one, witnesses and medics said. It was the first attack on the town since the 1990s. Rockets also hit the town of Carmiel, also in northern Israel, the army said, but there was no immediate word on casualties.
They were two of dozens of retaliatory attacks by Hezbollah guerrillas on northern Israel in the heaviest cross-border fighting in years. Earlier, a rocket killed a second Israeli woman in the border town of Nahariya.
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Israeli officials have been warning for several years that Hezbollah had rockets that could strike Haifa, 18 miles south of the Lebanon-Israel border; however, Thursday's announcement was the first time Hezbollah — which says it has more than 10,000 Katyusha rockets — confirmed having rockets of such long range.
"The Islamic resistance warns against targeting civilians and the infrastructure," according to a statement read on Hezbollah TV.
Hezbollah said it would "quickly rocket the city of Haifa and nearby areas if the southern suburbs and the city of Beirut are subjected to any direct Israeli aggression."
Earlier Thursday, senior Israeli military officials said Israel warned the Lebanese government that it plans to strike offices and homes of Hezbollah leaders in the southern suburbs of Beirut in their bombing campaign in Lebanon that began Wednesday after Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers.
Israel has hit hundreds of targets in Lebanon, a top Israeli general said.
Maj. Gen. Udi Adam, the chief of Israel's northern command, said Israel was targeting infrastructure in Lebanon that held rockets and other arsenals belong to Hezbollah.
"I imagine over time that we will be able to rid ourselves of this threat entirely," he said. He also said the army was not ruling out sending ground troops into Lebanon.
Israel's army chief Brig. Gen. Dan Halutz said Thursday no targets in Lebanon are immune, including the capital Beirut, if the Lebanese government fails to rein in Hezbollah guerrillas. Israeli security officials also warned Lebanon that Israel would strike the Beirut-Damascus highway, the main land link between Lebanon and the outside world.
Israeli forces intensified their attacks in Lebanon, imposing a naval blockade on the country (Full story) and pounding its only international airport and the Hezbollah TV station during Israel's heaviest air campaign against Lebanon in 24 years.
Tensions sharpened after Hezbollah snatched the two Israeli soldiers, with Israel seeking to end once and for all Hezbollah's presence on the border and the guerrillas insisting to trade the captured soldiers for Arab prisoners.
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In the middle is Lebanon, which Israel holds responsible. The Lebanese government insisted it had no knowledge of the move and did not condone it.
Hezbollah fighters operate with almost total autonomy in southern Lebanon, and the government has no control over their actions. But the government has long resisted international pressure to disarm the group — and two Hezbollah ministers are members of the Lebanese Cabinet. Any attempt to disarm the group by force could lead to sectarian conflict.
Two days of Israeli bombing has killed 47 Lebanese and wounded 103, Health Minister Mohammed Jawad Khalife said.
The Israeli warnings of more to come caused panic in Beirut, with traffic in the streets thin as people stuck to their homes and stayed away from their jobs. Others packed supermarkets to stock up on goods and long lines formed at gas stations, with many quickly running out of fuel.
Western countries, Russia and the United Nations called for restraint and demanded the soldiers' release. Arab and Lebanese TV stations ran urgents and beamed pictures across the Arab world. One station showed a man holding the head and torso of a baby killed in Israeli attacks.
CountryWatch: Lebanon
Eight Israeli soldiers have been killed in the violence so far, including three who died in Hezbollah's initial raid Wednesday to snatch the two soldiers.
In northern Israel, thousands of civilians spent Wednesday night in underground shelters as Hezbollah fired rockets across the border.
After hitting roads and bridges in the south on Wednesday, Israel dramatically expanded its campaign on Thursday with its biggest offensive in Lebanon since Israel's 1982 invasion.
Israeli warships imposed a naval blockade of Lebanese ports — which Lebanese officials confirmed. Besides threatening to hit Beirut, the Israeli military said it also could target the Beirut-to-Damascus highway, the main land link between Lebanon and the outside world.
Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz said his forces would not allow Hezbollah guerrillas to occupy positions along the southern Lebanese border.
"If the government of Lebanon fails to deploy its forces, as is expected of a sovereign government, we shall not allow Hezbollah forces to remain any further on the borders of the state of Israel," Peretz said.
Air force Maj. Gen. Amir Eshel said the campaign was likely Israel's largest ever in Lebanon "if you measure it in number of targets hit in one night, the complexity of the strikes."
The last major air, ground and sea offensive against Lebanon was in 1996 when about 150 Lebanese civilians were killed.
Travelers to and from Beirut were stranded all over the region and beyond after Israel hit the Beirut airport after dawn on Thursday. Among them was Foreign Minister Fawzi Salloukh, who was returning from a visit to Armenia and — like many — was forced to make his way home through Syria.
Israeli warplanes blasted craters into all three runways at the Beirut airport, by the seaside in the Lebanese capital's Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs, forcing its closure and the diversion of incoming flights to Cyprus. The main terminal building of the $500 million airport, which was built in the late 1990s, remained intact.
The Israeli military said it struck the airport because it is "a central hub for the transfer of weapons and supplies to the Hezbollah terrorist organization."
It was the first time since Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon and occupation of Beirut that the airport in south Beirut was hit by Israel. The Israelis in 1968 sent commandos to Beirut airport, blowing up 13 passenger planes on the runway in retaliation for Arab militants firing on an Israeli airliner in Athens.
Later Thursday, an Israeli missile hit the building housing the main studios of Hezbollah's Al-Manar TV in the south Beirut suburb of Haret Hreik, the channel's press officer Ibrahim Farhat told The Associated Press.
The station continued to broadcast, reporting that an Israeli rocket had hit a "minor transmission unit." One person was hurt in the strike, station manager Abdullah Kassir told Voice of Lebanon radio.
Other strikes hit bridges and roads in the south and deep into eastern Lebanon, striking a civic center attached to a Shiite Muslim mosque near the town of Baalbek, as well as a transmission antenna for Al-Manar, witnesses reported. The group's broadcasts stopped in the area.
Among the Lebanese dead in the strikes were a family of 10 and another family of seven, killed in their homes in the village of Dweir near Nabatiyeh, Lebanese officials said. A Lebanese soldier and a Hezbollah fighter have also been killed.
Meanwhile, helicopter gunships and jet fighters scoured southern Lebanon for guerrillas launching rockets into northern Israel.
Hezbollah fired volleys of rockets at Israeli towns, saying it was using a rocket called "Thunder 1" for the first time. The missile appeared to be more advanced than the inaccurate Katyusha, which has been the standard Hezbollah rocket for years.
The Israeli army said several rockets had landed more than 12 miles south of the border, showing that Hezbollah has managed to extend its missiles' range.
Hezbollah has declared it has more than 10,000 rockets and has in the past struck northern Israeli communities in retaliation for attacks against Lebanese civilians.
FOX News' Mike Tobin, David Lee Miller, James Rosen and Cassie Carothers and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
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