By Edward Cody and Scott Wilson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, July 28, 2006; A01
BEIRUT, July 27 -- With no sign of a cease-fire soon, Israeli warplanes and artillery pummeled targets across Lebanon without letup Thursday, concentrating fire on the rocky border hills where Hezbollah fighters are entrenched. The Israeli government called up thousands of reservists but decided against expanding its onslaught into a full-fledged invasion as some military officers suggested.
Undeterred after 16 days of attacks, Hezbollah militiamen again fired volleys of rockets into northern Israel, igniting a detergent factory and lightly wounding seven people. More than 110 Hezbollah rockets landed across the north on Thursday, following the launch of more than 150 rockets on Wednesday. More than 1,400 rockets have landed in Israel since the conflict began.
The French foreign minister, Philippe Douste-Blazy, called for a ministerial-level meeting of the U.N. Security Council by early next week to consider a cease-fire resolution designed to bring a halt to the bloodshed and begin negotiations on a permanent solution to the crisis. But Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in Malaysia for a regional gathering, once again insisted that a cease-fire would be of no use unless it was part of a comprehensive political solution.
"The key is the extension of Lebanese government authority throughout the country, the ability of the Lebanese government to control all forces, all arms in their country -- there should be no militias -- and that Lebanon can have the assistance of a U.N.-mandated international force," Rice said.
The second-in-command of al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, called on Muslims worldwide to stand up against what he called "the Zionist-Crusader war" in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, making the anti-Western terrorist group's first comment on the Lebanon conflict. "How can we remain silent while watching bombs raining on our people?" he said in a statement broadcast on the Qatar-based al-Jazeera satellite television station.
President Bush, responding to Zawahiri's remarks, said, "I'm not surprised people who use terrorist tactics would start speaking out. It doesn't surprise me." He added: "Zawahiri's attitude about life is that there shouldn't be free societies. And he believes that people ought to use terrorist tactics, the killing of innocent people, to achieve his objective. And so I'm not surprised he feels like he needs to lend his voice to terrorist activities that are trying to prevent democracies from moving forward."
With no hope for a swift truce coming out of Wednesday's crisis meeting of senior diplomats in Rome, Lebanese braced for more fighting and continued destruction of the country's freshly rebuilt infrastructure. Officials warned that fuel was running short, with less than a week's supply on hand and Israel so far refusing to authorize tankers to deliver oil. Electricity was sporadic in downtown Beirut. The Israeli military continued to insist on convoy-by-convoy negotiations for delivery of relief supplies to the more than half a million refugees who have fled fighting in the south.
Israeli warplanes attacked a field of radio and television relay stations at Amchit, in the mountains 30 miles north of Beirut, and damaged equipment belonging to the national television and radio broadcasting company, according to soldiers at a nearby army base. In the eastern Bekaa Valley, Israeli airstrikes hit three trucks carrying food to Beirut, killing a driver, security sources told the Reuters news agency, and a policeman was killed when an Israeli missile incinerated his car near the Christian hill town of Zahleh.
But it was in the south that the airstrikes rained most heavily, particularly around the town of Bint Jbeil, where eight Israeli soldiers were killed Wednesday in a Hezbollah ambush. A ninth was killed on a nearby mountain road when Hezbollah gunmen opened fire on an Israeli patrol between Bint Jbeil and the nearby village of Maroun al-Ras.
Fighting continued inside the town, which has long been known as a Hezbollah stronghold, said Brig. Gen. Shuki Shachar, deputy commander of Israel's northern forces, who briefed reporters at regional headquarters in Safed.
"Our ground forces are still in Bint Jbeil, continuing fighting Hezbollah terrorists inside the town," Shachar said, adding that the militia fighters had suffered greater losses than the Israeli military. "We have inflicted on the enemy during this battle double and triple casualties."
Israeli commanders had earlier said the town was under control, but Shachar said the army never intended to conquer Bint Jbeil. Rather, he said, its goal was to "control the town from outside" and raid specific targets based on intelligence. In addition to the heavy ground fighting in and around Bint Jbeil, he said, Israeli special forces were operating "in the depths of Lebanon trying to prevent ammunition from launching."
Journalists in southern Lebanon reported repeated barrages of bombs and rockets from Israeli planes and shells from heavy artillery just south of the border, many aimed at bridges and roads that connect the region's towns and villages. The Israeli military said its planes had conducted 90 attacks on Thursday.
Rockets hit two residential buildings in Tyre, along the Lebanese city's seafront. The target was unclear, but both buildings were around the corner from an office of Amal, a Shiite Muslim party whose leader, Nabih Berri, the parliament speaker, is negotiating on behalf of Hezbollah in efforts to reach a cease-fire and find a long-term solution to the crisis.
One blast sheared off a few stones and shattered windows along the street. Two battered air conditioners dangled from a first floor, still tethered to the wiring. The other rocket landed in the veranda of Bassam Tafla, a 41-year-old Red Cross worker. "I didn't see anything except the smoke," he said.
In an indication of the drastic conditions created by the continuous bombing, the International Committee of the Red Cross said its relief workers had entered the village of Blida on Tuesday and found bodies lying in the street and under the rubble of destroyed buildings. About 700 people, including 300 children, were found huddled in a Blida mosque, the Red Cross report said.
The Lebanese government estimated that more than 430 Lebanese have been killed since the conflict erupted after Hezbollah guerrillas captured two soldiers during a raid into northern Israel on July 12. The vast majority have been civilians, with Hezbollah acknowledging only a small number of casualties among its fighters. The Lebanese health minister estimated there could be as many as 150 to 200 more dead whose bodies have not yet been recovered from the rubble.
Hezbollah rockets and missiles have killed 18 Israeli civilians during the same period. Thirty-three Israeli soldiers have been killed, most of them in sharp ground fighting during Israeli attempts to capture Lebanese border villages and scour the surrounding hills for Hezbollah rocket-firing positions and weapons caches.
Some Israeli army generals had recommended expanding the ground operations in southern Lebanon after the casualties in Bint Jbeil on Wednesday, the deadliest day for Israeli forces since the start of the war. That recommendation was turned down by Israel's top security ministers at a meeting in Jerusalem. But the ministers authorized the call-up of as many as three divisions of reserve troops for what they called a "readiness exercise" rather than deployment to the front.
Israeli officials said that the uniformed military asked for the ability to call up reserves for training and that the security cabinet approved the maximum sought. Israeli military officials declined to comment on the size of an Israeli division, but said the call-up would likely involve "tens of thousands of troops" by the time it is complete.
Israel's uniformed military leadership pushed for a broader ground operation in southern Lebanon at a time when its stated goals of reducing Hezbollah rocket fire and uprooting guerrilla forces from a narrow band along Israel's northern border are proving elusive. But Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his defense minister, Amir Peretz, have maintained that the operation is progressing according to plan and urged the public to have patience.
The call-up of reserves also underscored Israel's contention that Hezbollah's July 12 raid was designed to spark a wider war in the Middle East. "We don't need these troops to attack, but to train," said an Israeli official familiar with the security cabinet decision. "We need to be ready in case something happens in Syria or elsewhere."
Israeli officials suspect that Iran, a sponsor of Hezbollah, may have encouraged the July 12 attack to show its capacity to stir strife in the volatile region at a time of growing international concern over its nuclear program. Syria is also a gatekeeper for Hezbollah's weapons, and Israeli officials say the government in Damascus may be supporting the militia's operation to enhance its strength in the region.
At the United Nations, the Security Council issued a statement saying it was "deeply shocked and distressed" by Israeli strikes Tuesday on a U.N. compound that killed four military observers. It called on Israel to conduct an inquiry into the incident and to publish its findings "as soon as possible."
The council agreement followed two days of tense negotiations that pitted China, which lost one of its nationals in the bombing, against the United States. The Bush administration prevailed on China to drop demands to include language condemning Israel for "any deliberate attack" against the U.N. post.
It also struck language that would have granted the United Nations a role in the investigation. But China's U.N. ambassador, Wang Guangya, expressed frustration that the text had been "watered down."
He warned that the U.S. refusal to support China's demand could complicate negotiations on a variety of issues, including ongoing talks on a draft resolution demanding that Iran suspend its nuclear enrichment and reprocessing activities.
Wilson reported from Jerusalem. Correspondents Jonathan Finer in Safed, Anthony Shadid in Tyre and Nora Boustany in Amchit and staff writers Robin Wright in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and Colum Lynch at the United Nations contributed to this report.