Israel Accepts U.N. Deal
Both Sides Warn Of More Fighting

By Molly Moore and Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, August 14, 2006

JERUSALEM, Aug. 14 -- The Israeli cabinet voted Sunday to accept a U.N.-declared cease-fire, even as Israeli military forces and Hezbollah fighters in southern Lebanon launched some of their most intense barrages of the war in anticipation of the Monday morning deadline.

The Lebanese government and Hezbollah agreed to the cease-fire Saturday. Prospects for an immediate halt in the fighting appeared dim as Hezbollah's leader said his militia would keep fighting Israeli troops as long as they remained in southern Lebanon, and Israeli officials insisted they would not withdraw their soldiers until an international force and the Lebanese army took control of the border area. Assembling an international military force in Lebanon is expected to take at least two or three weeks.

Israel pummeled the southern suburbs of Beirut on Sunday with bombardments that rattled the city, while Hezbollah fired 220 rockets -- one of its largest volleys yet -- into Israel, killing an 83-year-old man and pelting the port city of Haifa with strikes. The ground combat in southern Lebanon was also some of the most violent of the 33-day war as Israeli forces struggled to dominate as much territory as possible before the cease-fire deadline at 8 a.m. Monday. At least 17 people were killed Sunday in Lebanon.

Early Monday, two more blasts cracked across Beirut, less than two hours before the cease-fire was scheduled to take hold, and the Associated Press reported an Israeli air raid overnight killed seven people in the village of Brital, near the Hezbollah stronghold of Baalbek in eastern Lebanon's Bekaa Valley.

[Prime Minister Ehud Olmert ordered the Israeli army to begin abiding by the cease-fire as of 2 a.m., other than in cases of self-defense, Israel's Haaretz newspaper reported on its Web site. The Israeli military dropped leaflets on central Beirut early Monday, warning it would retaliate against any attack launched on it from Lebanon, the Associated Press reported.

Israeli airstrikes went on well after 2 a.m., targeting areas in eastern Lebanon and near the southern city of Sidon, the Reuters news agency reported, citing Lebanese security sources. Fierce clashes between Israeli troops and Hezbollah were also reported early Monday.]

The Israeli cabinet debated the U.N. resolution for nearly five hours Sunday, with some members criticizing the government's decision to expand ground combat just before the cease-fire was set to begin.

Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni told reporters after the cabinet meeting that the U.N. resolution, if enacted, "will change the rules of the game." But, she added, "I am not naive. . . . This is the Middle East, and I know that not every resolution is implemented."

Israeli military officials were meeting with the U.N. peacekeeping force in Lebanon, UNIFIL, "to fine-tune the details of the cease-fire," Defense Minister Amir Peretz said.

At a news briefing at the military's northern command headquarters in Safed near the Lebanese border, Peretz said even after the cease-fire deadline, "there is no situation in which Hezbollah fires at [Israeli] forces that we will not retaliate."

The U.N. resolution calls for 15,000 foreign troops and 15,000 Lebanese soldiers to be deployed in southern Lebanon.

The European Union's foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, meeting with Israeli officials in Jerusalem, said that at least 4,000 foreign troops could be ready to move into southern Lebanon "in a very, very short time," but he declined to pinpoint a timetable.

The resolution also calls for the causes of the current conflict to be addressed "urgently," but it leaves Hezbollah's fate and a dispute over the Shebaa Farms area to a future political settlement.

Throughout the weekend, Israeli forces ratcheted up the fighting across southern Lebanon. On Saturday, 24 soldiers were killed -- Israel's heaviest single-day toll in the war. On Sunday, at least five more were killed, and soldiers struggled all day to recover the bodies of five troops killed Saturday when Hezbollah fighters shot down their CH-53 Sikorsky helicopter. The crew included the first female Israeli service member to be killed in combat, a reserve air force mechanic.

Many of the soldiers were killed by Hezbollah antitank missile fire.

Israeli warplanes pursued their bombing campaign Sunday without letup, mounting an intense raid on the southern suburbs of Beirut. About 15 thundering explosions jarred the city in the early afternoon. The explosives leveled an area of several hundred square yards in a residential part of the Dahiya suburbs, controlled by Hezbollah and largely inhabited by the Shiite Muslims who are its main constituency.

Beirut residents who had been buoyed by news of the U.N. cease-fire agreement and ventured out for a late Sunday lunch were shaken back to the reality of more fighting by the first brace of blasts. The patrons of one restaurant fled from the terrace where they were eating and pointed to a large, white cloud rising from the southern suburbs. "Come on, let's go back home," one woman said dejectedly to her companion, and the terrace was suddenly empty.

Another series of blasts rattled windows at sunset.

The power of the bombs and their concentration on one area suggested that the Israeli jets were seeking to kill Hezbollah leaders hiding in an underground bunker, some Lebanese said. Hezbollah swiftly issued a communique saying its chief, Hasan Nasrallah, and other senior officials were not in the area at the time of the bombing and were unharmed.

Most of the Dahiya area has been evacuated during more than a month of repeated bombings of Hezbollah-connected office and residential buildings. But an Associated Press photographer reported that he saw rescuers pull the body of a child out of the wreckage, and local television reported that two civilians were killed. The exact number of dead and wounded was not known, police said, because Hezbollah activists were in charge of the area.

Airstrikes also reportedly hit the Ghandour chocolate factories southeast of Beirut. Israeli jets struck Tyre, a seaside city in the south, blasting gas stations and destroying a house. A woman, her three children and housekeeper died, police said, and a Lebanese soldier was killed in a separate strike.

In Bekaa Valley, a missile destroyed a truck as it drove down the road, killing two, and another strike crashed into the village of Ali al-Nahri, killing three more. A soldier was killed in another Bekaa air raid, officials reported.

In Tibnine, a village about six miles west of the Israeli border, hospital officials issued an appeal for help, saying 390 patients were in danger from Israeli shelling.

The Lebanese government has tallied nearly 800 people killed since the war began July 12 with a Hezbollah raid into northern Israel. The majority of victims have been civilians killed in Israeli bombings.

The Israeli military reported that 114 soldiers and 41 civilians have been killed in the conflict.

Combat with Hezbollah fighters was preventing Israeli forces from their goal of controlling the territory from the Litani River south to the Israeli border, a swath that ranges from 14 to 20 miles wide.

Hezbollah reported sustained Israeli shelling against Khiam, a guerrilla stronghold about three miles south of the Israeli-occupied town of Marjayoun. In Aita al-Shaab, a much-contested village just above the border near Bint Jbeil, the Shiite movement said its militia fighters ambushed Israeli troops advancing down the borderside road.

Fighting was reported in the vicinity of Al Ghandouriyeh to the north, where Israeli troops were trying to recover the bodies of five crew members who perished when their helicopter was shot down Saturday night, Hezbollah said.

Al Ghandouriyeh lies on the main road west from Marjayoun toward Tyre, about three miles south of the Litani River. Hezbollah resistance in and around the villages has became a major obstacle to Israeli troops seeking to establish control of territory south of the river. Three people were killed in an airstrike just north of the river in the same vicinity, Lebanese television reported.

Cody reported from Beirut. Correspondent Nora Boustany in Beirut and special correspondent Tal Zipper in Safed contributed.