NYT: After U.N. Accord, Israel Expands Push in Lebanon

After U.N. Accord, Israel Expands Push in Lebanon

by JOHN KIFNER and GREG MYRE | August 13, 2006

BEIRUT, Lebanon, Aug. 12 — Israel poured troops, tanks and commandos into southern Lebanon on Saturday, pushing deep toward the Litani River and carrying out 80 airstrikes against Hezbollah fighters, one day after a United Nations Security Council resolution called for a cease-fire.

The Israeli cabinet is to consider the Security Council resolution at its regular meeting on Sunday, but it was far from clear when the major military thrust ordered by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, apparently with American approval only hours after the United Nations vote on Friday, would end.

“This operation is aimed at preventing Hezbollah from firing rockets into northern Israel and is not limited in time,” said a government spokesman, Avi Pazner.

The Hezbollah leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, went on television on Saturday night to charge that “nothing had changed” since the United Nations resolution, but pledged to abide by a cease-fire once it came into effect.

“The war did not end, because the aggression is still going on,” he said, but added that his forces would stand down “when the Israeli aggression stops.”

The Lebanese government, which has proposed sending 15,000 Lebanese Army troops south in conjunction with an international peacekeeping force of 15,000 to form a kind of buffer zone, was to meet for a vote on the Security Council resolution late on Saturday.

France, New Zealand and Italy said Saturday that they were ready to contribute troops to the peacekeeping force, The Associated Press reported.

Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz, the Israeli chief of staff, said he had tripled the number of his troops in Lebanon, though he did not give figures and expected the fighting to continue despite the cease-fire call. Israel has had an estimated 10,000 soldiers in Lebanon. “We are fighting Hezbollah and we will continue to fight it until a cease-fire is decided,” General Halutz told reporters at an army base in northern Israel.

“We will continue to operate until we achieve our aims,” he said, adding, “The fact that a U.N. resolution was accepted yesterday doesn’t apply immediately on the cease-fire arrangement. Once the agreement is completed in all its details, then we will be able to decide.”

The airstrikes overnight ranged the length and breadth of Lebanon, from Tyre in the southwest to the Bekaa Valley in the northeast. Among the targets that were hit were an electric power plant near Sidon and another at Tyre, and the last remaining official border-crossing point from Syria at Arida, near the coast north of Tripoli, open for aid convoys and civilians fleeing the fighting. The highway was impassable, but drivers tried to maneuver around it through ruts and ditches.

In one overnight airstrike, a convoy of some 500 vehicles carrying civilians and Lebanese security forces, escorted by United Nations peacekeepers and fleeing north from Merj’ Uyun with permission negotiated with Israel, was struck near Shtaura in the Bekaa Valley.

Witnesses and hospital officials said at least six people were killed, including a Lebanese Army officer. The Israeli military said the convoy was fired upon because of a “suspicion” it might contain Hezbollah fighters. TV images showed wrecked cars, a woman’s shoes and other belongings scattered across the road.

Incomplete casualty figures flowed in through the day: at least 15 dead in the village of Rachef, 8 near the ports of Sidon and Tripoli, 3 in airstrikes on Kharayeb, and a Lebanese soldier in an airstrike near a military base in the Bekaa Valley. On the Israeli side, 7 soldiers were killed and more than 50 wounded as fighting raged in at least a half-dozen places in southern Lebanon.

From the northern Israeli town of Metulla, plumes of smoke were visible in several Lebanese villages just over the border. The Israeli troops were reported battling Hezbollah fighters near the village of Ghanduriye, about seven miles north of the border and two miles south of the Litani River. The Israeli Air Force carried out repeated strikes around the village. The fighting was the deepest Israel had advanced into southern Lebanon since the war began a month ago.

An Israeli ground commander, Brig. Gen. Alon Friedman, told Israeli radio that “this is a phased plan and the first stage allowing us to control the ground could take a few days. Cleaning-up operations will follow, in a stage that could last a few days or a few weeks.”

Mr. Pazner, the Israeli spokesman, when asked about the attack on the convoy, insisted that the Israeli Army did not aim at civilians. “This is our pride, that we only hit Hezbollah,” he said.

In Lebanon, the Higher Relief Council, the government agency compiling casualty reports, says that 1,056 Lebanese have been killed, the vast majority of them civilians and about a third of them children. It says that 3,600 people have been injured. Because of the chaotic conditions here, it is impossible to independently verify the figures. They could well be higher because relief workers hampered by road damage and shelling have not been able to reach many villages where bodies may be buried under rubble.

In Israel, the authorities reported that 3,650 rockets had fallen since the fighting began. They said 51 civilians had been killed in rocket attacks and 430 injured.

Aid convoys from the United Nations and other relief agencies have been unable to get help to the countryside for days. Relief workers say they must phone the Israeli Embassy in Washington to ask for permission for convoys to travel and it is rarely granted.

As the Lebanese cabinet prepared to meet, Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, architect of the plan to send the Lebanese Army south to establish government sovereignty in the area long run by Hezbollah, said, “The resolution is in Israel’s interest.”

Lebanon did not achieve all it hoped for in the resolution on Friday, particularly a United Nations solution to the dispute over the Shabaa Farms area claimed by Lebanon and held by Israel. But the language was specific in “welcoming the efforts of the Lebanese prime minister and the commitment of the government of Lebanon, in its seven-point plan, to extend its authority over its territory, through its own legitimate armed forces, such that there will be no weapons without the consent of the government of Lebanon.” It added that the plan requested “an immediate withdrawal of the Israeli forces from southern Lebanon.’’

In Beirut, there was little celebration at the prospect of a quick end to the fighting, and exhaustion at the war. “All we have is 1,000 dead and widespread destruction,” said Jamal Ghosn, who runs an Internet store. “Hezbollah’s stature has grown. But the biggest losers are the people.”

John Kifner reported from Beirut for this article, and Greg Myre from Metulla, Israel. Jad Mouawad contributed reporting from Beirut.