Cease-Fire Is Accepted In Lebanon
Fighting Unlikely to Halt Immediately

By Edward Cody and Molly Moore
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, August 13, 2006

BEIRUT, Aug. 13 -- Hezbollah and the Lebanese government accepted a U.N.-declared cease-fire with reservations Saturday night, but the war wore on with Israeli airstrikes, Hezbollah rocket attacks and expanded ground fighting.

Nineteen Israeli soldiers were killed Saturday and 70 were wounded, the highest single-day death toll for troops in Lebanon since the conflict started, Israeli military officials said Sunday. An Israeli military spokeswoman also said that a five-member crew of a downed helicopter was missing and feared dead. About 19 Lebanese civilians were killed.

The continued warfare indicated that the month-old conflict was unlikely to stop immediately despite Friday's U.N. Security Council resolution calling for an end to Hezbollah attacks on Israel and to Israel's military operations in Lebanon. U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan announced late Saturday that the cease-fire would take effect at 8 a.m. Lebanese time Monday, the Associated Press reported.

The Israeli cabinet was scheduled to make its decision Sunday, with Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres predicting that the U.N. cease-fire would be accepted in Jerusalem as well. But at the same time, Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz, the Israeli chief of staff, said he had dispatched more troops and armor to Lebanon to pursue Israel's goal of driving Hezbollah fighters from a strip of border territory and holding it until an international peacekeeping force can be deployed along the frontier.

Peres, in a telephone interview, said Israeli military forces were expanding operations in southern Lebanon because "the timetable permits it and there's an impression that Hezbollah controls the situation, which is not true." He added that while Hezbollah is continuing to fire rockets, "the best way to stop it is to clear out the area of the rockets."

Peres said that after the expected cabinet approval of the resolution Sunday, he believed that there was "a fair chance" that a cease-fire would be imposed by the end of the week and that the international forces could be in place in "another week or two" afterward.

In an interview with Israel Radio One broadcast Saturday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she expected major hostilities to end within "a day or so." After agreement by both Lebanon and Israel, Annan will work with the parties to establish a timetable. "I would hope that within no more than a day or so of that, that there would be a cessation of the hostilities on the ground."

Rice added: "I do need to warn, there will continue to be, I'm sure, some skirmishes. That always happens in a cessation of hostilities. But hopefully the large-scale violence can stop."

The U.N. resolution also calls for the Lebanese army and a bolstered U.N. force to move into southern Lebanon as Israeli forces withdraw and leaves the disarmament of Hezbollah and a dispute over the Shebaa Farms area to a future settlement.

Hezbollah's leader, Hasan Nasrallah, said in a televised announcement that his militia would abide by the cease-fire but only after the timing of Israel's withdrawal was worked out and Israeli troops stopped attacking. Once Israeli military operations cease, Hezbollah fighters will "adhere to it without hesitation," he said.

The Lebanese government announced three hours later that it too unanimously accepted the U.N. resolution, but with the reservations expressed by Hezbollah's cabinet ministers.

"Nothing changed today," Nasrallah said, noting Israel's decision to move reinforcements into Lebanon and its continued airstrikes and ground operations.

The Israeli attacks, he declared, were designed to impress Israelis by getting troops up to the Litani River, which meanders in large part between 14 to 20 miles north of the border and forms the line beyond which Israel had said Hezbollah fighters must be driven.

The Israeli military transported some of its troops toward the Litani in helicopters, flying over the villages and hillsides where combat has raged for the last month, an Israeli military spokesman said. In apparent reference to the move, Nasrallah said any Israeli troops who approach the river in an attempt to outflank Hezbollah forces farther south would also face resistance from militia fighters.

Other Israeli troops moved southwest from their stronghold in Marjayoun and engaged Hezbollah defenders near the village of Al Ghandouriyeh, about five miles west of the Galilee panhandle. Israeli forces on Thursday seized control without opposition in Marjayoun, a Christian town that was the headquarters of an Israeli-sponsored Lebanese militia during a two-decade occupation of the region that ended six years ago.

Hezbollah fighters shot down an Israeli helicopter with a missile Saturday in the Maryamein valley near the village of Yater, Hezbollah said in a report on its al-Manar TV station. The Israeli military later said the five crew members were missing.

Nineteen other soldiers were killed in incidents across the battlefield, including two who reportedly were crushed when one of their own tanks rolled over them, according to an Israeli military spokeswoman. Twelve of the soldiers died when anti-tank missiles hit their tanks or their tanks rolled over mines. Four of the soldiers were killed in separate incidents during the course of day-long firefights in town of Ghandouriyeh, just south of the Litani, the spokeswoman said. Another soldier died when an anti-tank missile hit a building.

Israeli warplanes, meanwhile, continued a broad pattern of airstrikes against infrastructure and roads, seeking to choke off routes used by Hezbollah to transport munitions and to cripple the environment in which the militia has flourished in recent years.

A missile strike at the village of Rashaf, near Bint Jbeil, blasted two houses, killing an estimated 15 people, according to reports from local officials. Three more were killed in an airstrike against the village of Kharayeb, about 16 miles south of Sidon. Electricity generating plants were hit at Sidon, on the coast, and at Tyre, about 25 miles farther south, officials reported.

In the far north of the country, Israeli jets blasted roads near the Al Arida border crossing into Syria, hitting a gasoline station and several vehicles. Witnesses said that flames and greasy black smoke rose into the sky for hours afterward and that Lebanese fleeing the country drove over back roads seeking alternate routes to the border crossing. Other Israeli planes hit a Lebanese army air base in the Bekaa Valley, Lebanese officials said, killing one soldier.

International aid agencies complained that the continued fighting blocked access to scores of villages in southern Lebanon. Israeli authorities refused to grant safe passage for delivery to villages or for relief supplies to be shipped into Lebanon, a U.N. spokesman said.

Milos Strugar, spokesman for the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, or UNIFIL, said it had received no explanation from Israel for an attack Friday evening on a convoy of Lebanese soldiers, internal security forces and civilian residents from Marjayoun that had been joined by several hundred cars full of civilians.

The convoy was accompanied by UNIFIL part of the way and then came under attack as it moved northward up the Bekaa Valley. At least six people were killed.

"UNIFIL had informed the IDF about the convoy and about the road to Beirut through the Bekaa," he explained, referring to the Israel Defense Forces.

"And then, the Israeli soldiers who were controlling the joint Lebanese security headquarters" in Marjayoun, he said, "knew exactly who was in the convoy."

The Israeli military fired on the convoy "acting on the suspicion that these were Hezbollah terrorists transporting weaponry," according to a statement issued by the IDF on Saturday morning.

At the same time, the Israeli military said it knew the convoy would be transiting on the road north, away from the battle zone.

"It is important to note that a request for the passage of the convoy was submitted to the IDF coordination apparatuses prior to its departure and was not authorized," the statement said.

Moore reported from Jerusalem. Correspondent Nora Boustany in Beirut and staff writer Robin Wright in Washington contributed to this report.