OMEN
07-15-2006, 12:59 AM
http://stuff.co.nz/inl/common/imageViewer/0,1445,246161,00.jpg
DEJA VU: Fire rises from Beirut airport after being attacked again by Israeli aircraft.
BEIRUT: Hizbollah's chief pledged open war on Israel after it bombed his Beirut home overnight in a dramatic expansion of an assault in Lebanon launched after Hizbollah fighters seized two Israeli soldiers and killed eight.
"You wanted open war. We are going to (wage) open war," Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said in a telephone message broadcast live on Hizbollah television after the attack.
He said an Israeli navy ship was ablaze off the coast of Beirut. Lebanese security sources said two rockets had hit it.
A Lebanese security source said the warship, which had bombed Lebanon earlier in the day, suffered considerable damage and Al Jazeera television reported four Israeli troops were missing at sea.
The Israeli Haaretz news Web site also said the ship was seriously damaged, although the army said earlier an attack from the shore had caused only light damage.
"Look at it burn," Nasrallah had declared in his address. "It will sink and along with it dozens of Zionist soldiers."
Celebratory gunfire erupted in the Lebanese capital and drivers honked their horns after Nasrallah's speech.
The Syrian- and Iranian-backed Islamist group, which wants to trade its captives for prisoners held in Israel, fired more rockets across the frontier, killing an Israeli woman and child.
Israeli air strikes destroyed Nasrallah's apartment building and a main Hizbollah office in southern Beirut. Hizbollah said Nasrallah and his family and bodyguards were safe.
An Israeli army spokeswoman would not say if the intention had been to kill Nasrallah. "We targeted by air the headquarters of Hizbollah in southern Beirut. We attacked two structures that are used by the leadership of Hizbollah," she said.
CIVILIAN TARGETS HIT
Israel also attacked many Lebanese civilian installations on the third day of its campaign to force the release of the two Israeli soldiers and halt cross-border rocket strikes.The assault has drawn mounting international criticism but the White House said US President George W Bush would not press Israel to halt its military operation.
Asked whether Bush had agreed to a request from Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora that he rein in the Israelis, White House spokesman Tony Snow said: "No The president is not going to make military decisions for Israel."
The Lebanon violence is the fiercest since 1996 when Israel launched a 17-day blitz on Hizbollah strongholds in the south, four years before its troops pulled out of Lebanon.
Israeli aircraft rocketed runways at Beirut's already closed international airport and bombed a flyover just to the south.
Israeli warplanes blasted the main Beirut-Damascus highway overnight, tightening an air, sea and land blockade of Lebanon, and bombed targets in Beirut's teeming Shi'ite Muslim suburbs, killing three people and wounding 40, security sources said.
Air strikes in south Lebanon killed five more people.
Their deaths brought to 66 the number of people, almost all civilians, killed in Lebanon in the past three days.
Hizbollah rocket attacks on northern Israel have now killed four Israelis and wounded more than 150.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's office said such salvos "cannot and will not be allowed to continue".
Snow told reporters that Bush had spoken by telephone to Lebanon's prime minister among other Middle East leaders.
He said Bush believed the Israelis had the right to protect themselves, but should avoid civilian casualties and damage.
BEIRUT GOVERNMENT POWERLESS
Israel holds Lebanon responsible for the actions of Hizbollah, a political-military faction which has members in parliament and in Siniora's mainly anti-Syrian cabinet.
The fragile Beirut government, too divided to disarm Hizbollah or extend its own control to the border, urged the UN Security Council to tell Israel to halt its onslaught.
It asked the Council to impose a cease-fire, but Israel said it was trying to free its neighbour from terrorist occupation and insisted the Beirut government secretly backed its actions.
Strong criticism of Israel came from France and the Vatican, as well as Egypt, Jordan and other countries.
The violence in Lebanon coincided with an Israeli incursion into the Gaza Strip launched last month to try to retrieve another captured soldier and halt Palestinian rocket fire.
Israel bombed offices of Hamas lawmakers, destroyed a bridge and fired a tank shell that killed a Palestinian on Friday.
Israeli forces withdrew overnight from central Gaza after two days of fighting, but did not rule out going back in.
Palestinian gunmen blew a huge hole in the border wall between Gaza and Egypt, allowing hundreds of Gazans who had been stranded on the closed border for two weeks to enter the Strip.
Since the Gaza offensive was launched on June 28, Israel has killed more than 80 Palestinians, a majority of them militants.
Reuters
DEJA VU: Fire rises from Beirut airport after being attacked again by Israeli aircraft.
BEIRUT: Hizbollah's chief pledged open war on Israel after it bombed his Beirut home overnight in a dramatic expansion of an assault in Lebanon launched after Hizbollah fighters seized two Israeli soldiers and killed eight.
"You wanted open war. We are going to (wage) open war," Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said in a telephone message broadcast live on Hizbollah television after the attack.
He said an Israeli navy ship was ablaze off the coast of Beirut. Lebanese security sources said two rockets had hit it.
A Lebanese security source said the warship, which had bombed Lebanon earlier in the day, suffered considerable damage and Al Jazeera television reported four Israeli troops were missing at sea.
The Israeli Haaretz news Web site also said the ship was seriously damaged, although the army said earlier an attack from the shore had caused only light damage.
"Look at it burn," Nasrallah had declared in his address. "It will sink and along with it dozens of Zionist soldiers."
Celebratory gunfire erupted in the Lebanese capital and drivers honked their horns after Nasrallah's speech.
The Syrian- and Iranian-backed Islamist group, which wants to trade its captives for prisoners held in Israel, fired more rockets across the frontier, killing an Israeli woman and child.
Israeli air strikes destroyed Nasrallah's apartment building and a main Hizbollah office in southern Beirut. Hizbollah said Nasrallah and his family and bodyguards were safe.
An Israeli army spokeswoman would not say if the intention had been to kill Nasrallah. "We targeted by air the headquarters of Hizbollah in southern Beirut. We attacked two structures that are used by the leadership of Hizbollah," she said.
CIVILIAN TARGETS HIT
Israel also attacked many Lebanese civilian installations on the third day of its campaign to force the release of the two Israeli soldiers and halt cross-border rocket strikes.The assault has drawn mounting international criticism but the White House said US President George W Bush would not press Israel to halt its military operation.
Asked whether Bush had agreed to a request from Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora that he rein in the Israelis, White House spokesman Tony Snow said: "No The president is not going to make military decisions for Israel."
The Lebanon violence is the fiercest since 1996 when Israel launched a 17-day blitz on Hizbollah strongholds in the south, four years before its troops pulled out of Lebanon.
Israeli aircraft rocketed runways at Beirut's already closed international airport and bombed a flyover just to the south.
Israeli warplanes blasted the main Beirut-Damascus highway overnight, tightening an air, sea and land blockade of Lebanon, and bombed targets in Beirut's teeming Shi'ite Muslim suburbs, killing three people and wounding 40, security sources said.
Air strikes in south Lebanon killed five more people.
Their deaths brought to 66 the number of people, almost all civilians, killed in Lebanon in the past three days.
Hizbollah rocket attacks on northern Israel have now killed four Israelis and wounded more than 150.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's office said such salvos "cannot and will not be allowed to continue".
Snow told reporters that Bush had spoken by telephone to Lebanon's prime minister among other Middle East leaders.
He said Bush believed the Israelis had the right to protect themselves, but should avoid civilian casualties and damage.
BEIRUT GOVERNMENT POWERLESS
Israel holds Lebanon responsible for the actions of Hizbollah, a political-military faction which has members in parliament and in Siniora's mainly anti-Syrian cabinet.
The fragile Beirut government, too divided to disarm Hizbollah or extend its own control to the border, urged the UN Security Council to tell Israel to halt its onslaught.
It asked the Council to impose a cease-fire, but Israel said it was trying to free its neighbour from terrorist occupation and insisted the Beirut government secretly backed its actions.
Strong criticism of Israel came from France and the Vatican, as well as Egypt, Jordan and other countries.
The violence in Lebanon coincided with an Israeli incursion into the Gaza Strip launched last month to try to retrieve another captured soldier and halt Palestinian rocket fire.
Israel bombed offices of Hamas lawmakers, destroyed a bridge and fired a tank shell that killed a Palestinian on Friday.
Israeli forces withdrew overnight from central Gaza after two days of fighting, but did not rule out going back in.
Palestinian gunmen blew a huge hole in the border wall between Gaza and Egypt, allowing hundreds of Gazans who had been stranded on the closed border for two weeks to enter the Strip.
Since the Gaza offensive was launched on June 28, Israel has killed more than 80 Palestinians, a majority of them militants.
Reuters