Fighter bombers pummeled Lebanese infrastructure Monday, setting Beirut's
port ablaze and hitting a Hezbollah stronghold in attacks that killed at least
17 people. The militants group retaliated by firing rockets that flew further
into Israel than ever before.
The Katyusha rockets landed in the town of Atlit, about 35 miles south of the
border and some five miles south of the port city of Haifa. Nobody was hurt in
the Monday attack, but Hezbollah rockets killed eight people in Haifa on Sunday.
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Lebanese men pass by the wreckage of vehicles
in front of a building that holds the Lebanese Interior Ministry's civil
defense center of Tyre, after it was attacked by an Israeli warplane at
the southern Lebanon city of Tyre, Sunday, July 16, 2006.
[AP]
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Security officials and medics said that Hezbollah rockets also fell on Haifa,
the second day the city has been targeted. No injuries were immediately
reported.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan called
for the deployment of international forces to stop the bombardment of Israel and
to persuade the Jewish state to stop attacks on Hezbollah.
Speaking on the margin of the Group of Eight summit in St. Petersburg,
Russia, Blair said the fighting would not stop until the conditions for a
ceasefire were created.
"The only way is if we have a deployment of international forces that can
stop bombardment coming into Israel," he said.
Annan appealed to Israel to spare civilian lives and infrastructure. The G-8
nations, who had struggled to reach a consensus on the escalating warfare
between Israel and Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon, have expressed concern on
the "rising civilian casualties" and urged both sides to stop the violence.
Separately, the European Union said it was considering the deployment of a
peacekeeping force in Lebanon.
Israeli planes and artillery guns killed 17 people and wounded at least 53
others in the overnight attacks, Lebanese security officials said as the death
toll from the conflict rose to more than 200 - 196 in Lebanon, according to
the officials, and 24 in Israel.
Israel said its planes and artillery struck 60 targets overnight. Its
military sought to punish Lebanon for the barrage of 20 rockets on Haifa, the
country's third-largest city and one that had not been hit before the current
round of fighting began last Wednesday.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert vowed "far-reaching consequences" for the
Haifa attack. The eight deaths made it Hezbollah's deadliest strike ever on
Israel.
Israeli officials accused Syria and Iran of providing Lebanese guerrillas
with sophisticated weapons, saying the missiles that hit Haifa had greater range
and heavier warheads than those Hezbollah had fired before.
