Isreal, Lebanon still trading rocket attacks
An Israeli gunner adjusts shells at a heavy artillery piece fires before firing on a target in southern Lebanon, near Kiryat Shmona, on the Israeli border Sunday. Lebanese guerrillas fired a relentless barrage of rockets into the northern Israeli city of The Associated Press
July 17, 2006
BEIRUT, Lebanon – Hezbollah and Israel traded rocket and missile barrages without letup for a fifth day Sunday, as the war that has suddenly flared in the Middle East showed no sign of easing. Hezbollah rockets struck deep inside Israel, killing eight people in the northern city of Haifa, and Israel answered with even more lethal blows across Lebanon and into the Bekaa Valley near Syria.
The toll on both sides rose to at least 175, mostly civilians. In addition to the Israeli victims at a rail repair facility in Haifa, eight Canadians vacationing at their family village in Lebanon died in an Israeli raid, and a sea-launched missile killed at least nine people at a civil defense building in the southern Lebanese port of Tyre.
Israel warned of massive retaliation after the Haifa attack, and accused Iran and Syria of providing the weaponry used. Military officials said the missiles were more advanced – with longer range and heavier warheads – than the hundreds of rockets the guerrillas had rained on northern Israel earlier.
In the early hours of Monday, witnesses report that wave of Israeli airstrikes had hit the Lebanese city of Tripoli and Hezbollah strongholds in eastern town of Baalbek.
With violence spiraling alarmingly, world leaders meeting in St. Petersburg produced for the first time a draft framework to end the crisis and a U.N. envoy landed in Beirut. The Group of Eight most industrialized nations expressed concern over “rising civilian casualties on all sides” and urged both sides to stop their attacks.
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But both Israel and Hezbollah signaled that their attacks would only intensify in an already brutal battle that has killed at least 152 in Lebanon and 23 in Israel.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert vowed “far-reaching consequences” for the Haifa attack, Hezbollah’s deadliest strike ever on Israel. The morning barrage of 20 rockets came after Israeli warplanes unleashed their heaviest strikes yet on Beirut.
Hezbollah’s leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, said that despite the barrage, the guerrillas were “in their full strength and power” and that their “missile stockpiles are still full.”
