Israel Blockades, Bombs Lebanon While Hezbollah Rains Rocket Fire

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Conflict Escalates in the Middle East
The leader of Hezbollah promised an all-out war Friday after Israeli warplanes attacked his residence and Hezbollah's main headquarters in an apparent assassination attempt, and Israel vowed to press its offensive in Lebanon until the Shiite Muslim militant group was disarmed.

The sunny day began with Israeli aircraft attacking the runways of Beirut's airport. Incoming flights were diverted to the Mediterranean island of Cyprus; tourists in Beirut were stranded. During the day, Israeli aircraft attacked two Lebanese air bases near the Syrian border. After the rockets fell near a cable car attraction in southwestern Haifa, Israeli helicopter gunships attacked the airport a second time. They destroyed fuel depots, sending flames and billowing black smoke arcing across the night sky.

In addition to the naval blockade, Lebanese television stations reported that the key Beirut-Damascus highway was attacked late Thursday. And in Beirut's southern suburbs, Israeli planes dropped leaflets warning residents to avoid areas where Hezbollah operates. The Israeli military said it attacked more than 100 targets across southern Lebanon with artillery fire and airstrikes.

In Nahariya, a coastal Israeli town, doctors and orderlies moved patients to underground bunkers for fear of strikes by rockets, some of which landed near a major regional hospital. Medical officials said more than a dozen people were treated for shrapnel wounds or other injuries caused by the rockets, which effectively shut down the city of 55,000 people.

Rockets slammed into the city's main boulevard, lined with ice cream stores, souvenir shops and restaurants, which had been spared such attacks for as long as most merchants could remember. At twilight, four missiles landed downtown, hitting a four-story building of apartments and a corner grocery, and setting it ablaze.

[On Friday, Israeli jets bombed a base for pro-Syrian Palestinian guerrillas in eastern Lebanon, security sources said according to the Reuters news agency. There were no immediate reports of casualties.]

In Washington, U.S. officials said the Bush administration had urged Israel not to strike Lebanese government targets, fearful that the conflict between Hezbollah and Israel could undermine a government it views as one of its success stories in the Middle East. "The United States communicated its concern about the stability of the Lebanese government, which is better than any alternative," said a senior U.S. official who requested anonymity because of ongoing diplomacy.

At the United Nations, Secretary General Kofi Annan said he was "deeply alarmed" by the escalating violence and instructed three senior U.N. envoys, Vijay Nambiar, Alvaro de Soto and Terje Roed-Larsen, to travel to Egypt, Israel, Lebanon and Syria "to get all parties to step back from the brink of an even more deadly conflict." At the Security Council, the United States vetoed an Arab-backed resolution condemning Israel's military incursion into Gaza.

In Lebanon, the scenes of war were reminiscent of past conflicts -- a civil war that ended in 1990 and large Israeli offensives against Hezbollah in 1993 and 1996.

At the Damour River, where Israeli aircraft destroyed the bridge in the early morning, residents of southern Lebanon headed by car, taxi, minibus and on foot for the relative safety of Beirut. As lines of cars stretched down the road, bulldozers and trucks pushed dirt into the river in an effort to build a makeshift road to let traffic pass. One girl sat on the hood of a car, holding a doll with blond hair and a pink dress, as her mother idly watched clouds of dust rise from the work.

"It's tough, and it's toughest on the people," said Talib Saad, a 50-year-old plumber, who had waited three hours for a ride to Beirut from the destroyed bridge. "It's the people who suffer. They're the ones who are always destroyed."

He looked out at the construction teams. In his hand was a black bag with two peaches, his meal for the day.

"Who's going to compensate us?" he asked.