By Anthony Shadid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, July 16, 2006; A1
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 Israel, in turn, has said it wants Hezbollah disarmed and withdrawn from the border area it has effectively controlled since 2000 and the Lebanese army deployed to southern Lebanon.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.
In the worst bloodshed in Lebanon, at least 16 civilians were killed in an Israeli attack on their two vehicles, said Milos Strugar, a senior adviser to the U.N. force in southern Lebanon. He said they were fleeing the town of Mirwaheen before noon after Israel had ordered its evacuation. The attack incinerated the vehicles, and photographs showed several children tossed on a rocky slope, their burned bodies lying next to sandals, a water bottle and other debris. Hospital officials in Tyre said they received 21 bodies, many of them children. Most were dismembered, burned and unidentifiable.
About 100 other villagers had gone to the nearby U.N. post seeking shelter, but were turned away, U.N. officials said. Strugar said the U.N. force there planned to evacuate the 150 or 200 villagers still in Mirwaheen on Sunday.
The Israeli military said in a statement that its air force had targeted an area "used as launching grounds for missiles fired by Hezbollah." It said it regrets civilian casualties but blamed Hezbollah for operating from populated civilian areas.
The scope of Israeli attacks broadened across the country -- on gas stations, fuel tanks, roads and the last bridge on the highway to Damascus, the main artery out of the country. Ports were struck in Tripoli and the Christian towns of Juniyah and Amsheet. After nightfall, Israeli aircraft attacked what appeared to be Hezbollah offices in the eastern city of Baalbek, near the Syrian border.
In Beirut, Israeli forces struck the port and the landmark lighthouse on the seafront. More intensely, armaments barraged the Shiite Muslim neighborhoods of southern Beirut, apparently targeting Hezbollah's leadership for the second day and the home of a leader of the Palestinian group Hamas. Columns of smoke billowed across the sky, parallel to fuel depots still burning at the Beirut airport. At one point around dusk, blasts could be heard every few minutes in the nearly empty streets.
In all, police said Israeli attacks since Wednesday had killed 92 people and wounded 250, almost all of them civilians.
"They keep bombing, and we keep trying to get through it," Rida Zenbaracji said matter-of-factly, standing outside his restaurant. As the blasts sounded, he calmly painted the price for a falafel sandwich on a sign hanging outside, 50 cents. "You live or you die," he said, shrugging, "but you've got to keep working."
Ten customers had come on this day, down from the typical 150. Plates full of eggplants, beets and potatoes sat largely untouched along a glass counter. No matter, he insisted. "God will bring me some customers," he smiled.
In parts of Beirut, sentiments were growing angry, frustrated and scared. To many, the conflict seems unbridgeable: No one expects Hezbollah to surrender its arms, and no one expects Israel to end its attack without something strategic exchanged. Left in the middle is a city that spent billions of dollars rebuilding from the civil war's destruction.
"The situation is just so bad," said Evelynn Mansour, who lives in the Christian neighborhood of Ashrafiyeh. "All that work over the years is being destroyed. They wrecked the future. I don't understand how Hezbollah can decide this on its own."
But in the southern suburbs, where Hezbollah draws its most fervent support, Hezbollah's posture has energized a community that rallies behind the movement for its material support as well as its projection of strength and pride. Hezbollah trucks careered through the streets, broadcasting songs and news of the Islamic Resistance, the group's name for its military wing.
"Talk to me! Talk to me!" Jihad Alaadine shouted as he passed by on a scooter. "I am willing to stay in an underground shelter for two years, but we will never give up the weapons," the 37-year-old said, pulling to the curb near a wrecked bridge. "There is a better chance that the devil goes to heaven than us giving up the arms. Yesterday we destroyed one of their boats, and we are ready to destroy one every day."
Israel's military confirmed Saturday that an Iranian-made missile was responsible for the explosion Friday night on an Israeli navy ship participating in the sea blockade of Lebanon, about nine miles offshore.
There were reports Friday night that an unmanned drone packed with explosives caused the blast. But Israeli military officials said Saturday that Hezbollah fired a C802 anti-ship missile at the Israeli naval vessel, the Ahi Hanit. The ship -- a Saar 5-class missile boat, capable of carrying a crew of 65 sailors -- was returning Saturday under its own power to Haifa, Israeli military officials said. The body of one sailor was recovered. Three others were missing.
The radar-guided C802 missile has a range of roughly 70 miles, and Israeli military officials said the version used Friday was manufactured in Iran. Iran helped create Hezbollah during Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon and has long supported it with weapons and money. Iran and Syria remain Hezbollah's most important allies, although Iran's influence is considered ascendant.
"We can see now another clear fingerprint of Iranian involvement," said Brig. Gen. Ido Nehushtan, a member of Israel's general staff. "This is their equipment and know-how. They are very much involved in this."
Across Lebanon, thousands of residents plied the roads in search of safety, a relative term that seemed to change by the hour. Public schools in Beirut and the Chouf Mountains were filled with refugees from south Beirut and southern Lebanon.
In a country often vividly divided by sect, the Druze community in the Chouf opened its schools to Shiite inhabitants in regions near the Israeli border. At Barouk Middle School, local officials carried in loaves of bread and about 200 residents set up makeshift apartments in classrooms. Clothes were draped over school desks next to cheap carpets, and cardboard boxes were filled with beans, oil and peaches. Foam mattresses with tattered blankets were laid out beneath chalkboards.
Mohammed Hassan left the southern city of Sidon on Thursday, piling his family of 14 in a red 1980 Mercedes. "We were all piled on top of each other," he said.
His month-old daughter, Fatima, napped in a classroom. Other relatives strolled outside on a cloudy day.
"It's in God's hands now," Hassan said. "I don't know how this is going to end. Actually, no one does."
Correspondent Scott Wilson in Jerusalem and special correspondent Alia Ibrahim in Beirut contributed to this report.