Israel Answers Hezbollah Strike

Photos
Anxiety Grips Civilians in Lebanon, Israel
Israel continues its bombing of Hezbollah strongholds in the Lebanese capital of Beirut Sunday as a large rocket apparently fired by Hezbollah forces hit an Israeli government rail yard in the northern port city of Haifa, killing eight people. Meanwhile, the United States and other nations prepare to evacuate their citizens.

The Lebanese Health Ministry said about 150 Lebanese, nearly all of them civilians, have been killed since the fighting began Wednesday, while more than 400 have been wounded. Four Israeli civilians had been killed by Hezbollah rocket fire before Sunday's attack, which killed eight government employees of Israel Railways and wounded more than two dozen others.

"When the Zionists behave like there are no rules and no limits to the confrontation, it is our right to behave in the same way," Hasan Nasrallah, Hezbollah's leader, said in a Sunday address televised on the movement's al-Manar satellite channel.

Nasrallah said five days of Israeli attacks had not diminished Hezbollah's capability and promised that Israel would face more "surprises" if it kept up the airstrikes, noting that Hezbollah so far has not hit the petrochemical plant on Haifa's eastern edge. He said the group was faced with "no choice" in carrying out the attack against Haifa, population 270,000, located about 22 miles south of the Lebanese border. He also called for backing from Arab and Muslim leaders, most of whom he said have failed to express sufficient support.

"Hezbollah is not fighting a battle for Hezbollah or even for Lebanon," Nasrallah said. "We are now fighting a battle for the Islamic nation. Where does the nation stand on this battle?"

Israeli officials said the rocket that smashed through the corrugated-steel roof of a railroad maintenance shed here was a prototype of a Fajr-3 missile, made by Iran. Blood pooled in the sunken rails, and debris and lights that once hung from the torn roof lay in piles. Military officials are still examining shrapnel from the rocket to determine whether it was Iranian-made or a Syrian version of the same model, an M220. Israel has focused diplomatic efforts since the Hezbollah raid on highlighting Iran's and Syria's financial and logistical support for the group.

Capt. Jacob Dallal, an Israeli military spokesman, said the rocket that hit here has a range of 27 miles and carried a 90-pound warhead, more than twice the size of the explosives that tip the Katyushas that Hezbollah has used previously.

In Lebanon's southern port of Tyre, an Israeli airstrike killed 20 people and wounded more than 50 in an attack on the civil defense building, Lebanese Health Ministry officials confirmed. Seven other Lebanese civilians, all of whom held Canadian citizenship, died when their home in the border town of Aitaroun was hit in an Israeli strike, Canadian officials confirmed.

Television footage from the Tyre strike showed rubble spilling into the streets, cars wrecked and ambulances loaded with bloodied bodies. A veneer of ash settled over the bomb site as stretchers carried other wounded. As one wounded man was loaded into an ambulance, he shouted: "God is great! Hezbollah will prove victorious."

Ali Saffadin, a Tyre resident who worked for the civil defense agency for nine years, said his year-old daughter was killed in the strike, which also sent his wife to the hospital in critical condition. He said two buildings were hit by at least three rockets, and he denied that members of Hezbollah or the Lebanese military were nearby.

Israeli raids intensified on the southern suburbs of Beirut, known as the Dahiya, a Shiite Muslim region that gives Hezbollah its greatest support. Explosions sounded through the night and picked up in intensity after the Haifa attack.

Entire buildings around Hezbollah's compound were reduced to rubble, spilling concrete and tangled wire into the street. Black smoke billowed over the poor, densely populated neighborhood, and acrid fumes lent a haze to already overcast skies. Al-Manar TV was knocked off the air for several minutes.

"Nobody knows what the end will be, nobody knows," said Abbas Miski, one of the few residents out in the neighborhood, standing before his plastics factory and nearby apartment. "But I'm still here, and I'll stay here as long as I live."