Israelis Take Cover From Militant Rockets

An Israeli reacts after a Hezbollah-fired rocket directly hit a building in the northern costal town of Nahariya, Thursday July 13, 2006. Rockets fired by Lebanese guerillas hit a group of journalists working in the northern Israeli town of Nahariya on Thursday, injuring at least one person. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit) (Ariel Schalit - AP)

The violence started Wednesday when Hezbollah guerrillas captured two Israeli soldiers and killed eight in attacks on Israel's northern border.

In response, Israel hit southern Lebanon with waves of airstrikes, blasting Beirut's airport and army bases in its heaviest air campaign against its neighbor in 24 years. Four dozen civilians were killed, Lebanese officials said.

Senior Israeli officials said Thursday their offensive in Lebanon was open-ended and would try to push the militants away from the Israeli border.

"We cannot allow ourselves to let them stay there," Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni told Israel's Channel 10 TV.

In Nahariya, a Mediterranean resort town of 50,000, cars with suitcases tied to the roofs headed south after Israel's Home Front Command ordered hotels and guest houses to shut down. One woman was sitting on her fifth-floor balcony when a rocket hit her building, cutting through the ceiling and killing her.

Nahariya Hospital was on high alert, and the deputy director, Moshe Daniel, said all elective surgeries were canceled. Doctors evacuated the top floor and moved the patients, most of them children, to the basement, along with dozens of women in the maternity ward.

One of the basement rooms was packed with about 30 new mothers. Doctors rushed back and forth and babies cried. Golan Elbachli, 31, stood with his wife looking into a crib at their second child.

"This doesn't affect her. She's sleeping like a queen," Elbachli said of his newborn daughter. "Her mother, it affects."