Israel Intensifies Assault on Beirut

Hezbollah Sends Rockets Farther Beyond Border

BEIRUT, July 16 -- Columns of white smoke billowed over Beirut on Saturday as Israel escalated its four-day-old assault on the Lebanese capital, striking Hezbollah's offices, residences of its leadership, the city's port and a lighthouse along a scenic boulevard. Hezbollah fired barrages of rockets the farthest it had yet into Israel.

The United Nations said at least 16 Lebanese civilians, many of them children, were killed when an Israeli strike destroyed two cars fleeing a village that Israel had ordered evacuated.

In a war that has witnessed an escalation each day, the asymmetrical nature of the conflict was laid bare Saturday: For each attack by Hezbollah since it captured two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid, Israel has inflicted a far greater price. It has systematically dismantled the country's infrastructure, displaced thousands of residents and instilled a new sense of foreboding and fear in the now-deserted streets of this brash, confident city still shadowed by the legacy of Lebanon's 15-year civil war.

The U.S. Embassy said it was exploring ways to help evacuate some of the 25,000 Americans in Lebanon. An Italian convoy left Beirut on Saturday, and the French government said plans were underway to ferry its citizens from Lebanon to Syria or Cyprus.

"God knows what the future will bring," said Mohammed Kayal, a 45-year-old resident standing outside a falafel restaurant as Israeli attacks on the city's poor southern suburbs reverberated along the street. "I have a feeling the country is going to return to the days it used to live in. The rich managed to go abroad, and the poor have to search for a loaf of bread."

Israel and Hezbollah have each laid out their demands. Hezbollah has insisted that Israel trade three Lebanese prisoners for the two soldiers it seized Wednesday. Israel, in turn, has said it wants Hezbollah disarmed and withdrawn from the border area it has effectively controlled since 2000 and the Lebanese army deployed to southern Lebanon. Hezbollah's well-armed militia and its support among Shiite Muslims, Lebanon's largest community, give it an effective veto in Lebanese politics.

In an emotional televised address, Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora pledged to extend the government's authority to the south but said the United Nations must enforce a cease-fire first. He implicitly criticized Hezbollah's capture of the Israeli soldiers that ignited the fighting, reflecting a sentiment that is widely held here by Lebanon's other religious communities.

"The government alone has the legitimate right to decide on matters of peace and war," Siniora said in the broadcast. At the end, his voice quivering, tears ran down his cheeks. "Lebanon will remain, will remain, will remain," he said.

In private, Hezbollah's officials showed no signs of backing down in a fight that its leader, Hasan Nasrallah, has cast in existential terms. Hezbollah militiamen fired about 90 rockets into northern Israel, including several that hit the city of Tiberias, more than 20 miles south of the border, for the first time. The attacks on Tiberias, a resort on the Sea of Galilee, came in two barrages that sent four Israeli civilians to the hospital with shrapnel wounds and seven others suffering from anxiety.

The Tiberias strikes underscored the improved range of Hezbollah's arsenal, which Israeli military officials said has been greatly improved since Israel ended its occupation of southern Lebanon in May 2000. Lebanese military analysts believe Hezbollah has as many as 10,000 Katyusha rockets with a range of 12 miles, although some have been modified to reach farther. Hezbollah is also believed to possess a far smaller number of Fajr rockets, which, with a range of about 30 miles, are more dangerous for Israel, and Zilzals, its most potent weapons with possible ranges of 130 miles. Analysts say it probably has a few dozen of those.

Some of the short-range rockets hit other towns and fields across northern Israel on Saturday, setting brush ablaze and lightly injuring at least seven other people. Dozens more were treated for shock. Since the fighting erupted, four Israeli civilians have been killed and more than 100 treated for injuries, most of them suffering from panic.

Israel deployed U.S.-made Patriot missile batteries in the port city of Haifa, a military spokeswoman told the Reuters news service Saturday. And Defense Minister Amir Peretz has prepared a declaration of a home-front emergency to present at the weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday.