Hezbollah guerrillas hit back, firing at least 160 rockets at towns across
northern Israel, wounding at least 17 people and killing a 52-year-old
Israeli-American at the entrance to his home in Kibbutz Sa'ar near the town of
Naharia, Israeli police said.
The man, who was not immediately identified, had been riding his bike home
after a warning siren went off, said Yehuda Shavit, a local government official.
Neighbors said he was originally from the Boston area and had been living in
Israel for the last 20 years. The man's wife and two daughters had fled to
southern Israel when the rocket attacks started, Shavit said, adding that more
than half of the kibbutz residents also had left.
At the scene, police removed the remains of the rocket from the crater it
blasted, as an orange bulldozer was clearing away the rubble.
An Associated Press reporter standing on a hilltop overlooking the Lebanese
border town of Kfar Kila, about a mile from Israel, saw dozens of outgoing
rockets fly overhead and across the Israeli border. Israeli artillery was
returning fire, with a shell falling about every two minutes.
Israel medics said one of the rockets hit near the town of Beit Shean, about
42 miles inside Israel, the deepest rocket strike into Israel so far. Witnesses
reported that a stray Hezbollah rocket hit the West Bank for the first time,
striking between the villages of Fakua and Jalboun, near Beit Shean.
Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank have staged daily support marches for
Hezbollah, cheering the group's fight against the Israelis.
"We know that they did not intend to strike Palestinian territory. They
intended to strike Israel," said Fahmi Zarer, a spokesman for Palestinian
President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah Party.
Israeli jets fired at least one missile at a Lebanese army base in the
village of Sarba, in the Iqlim al Tuffah province, a highland region where
Hezbollah is believed to have offices and bases. One soldier was killed,
bringing to 26 the number of Lebanese soldiers killed since the start of the
Israeli offensive against Lebanon on July 12, when Hezbollah guerrillas seized
two soldiers and killed three.
The Lebanese military has largely stayed out of the three-week-old conflict,
though has said it will fight if Israel launches a wide-scale invasion, and
Israeli warplanes have repeatedly attacked soldiers. It was not clear what
prompted the airstrike on the army base.
In an incident denied by the Israeli military, Hezbollah said in a statement
that it had attacked an Israeli army armored unit that crossed into Lebanon on
Wednesday morning, destroying two tanks and killing or wounding their crews.
Israel wants to push Hezbollah away from the border, so Israeli patrols and
civilians there are not in danger of attack. The army hopes to drive Hezbollah
far enough north so that most of the guerrillas' rockets cannot reach the Jewish
state.
Israeli officials have said their soldiers were to go as far as the Litani,
about 18 miles from the border, and hold the ground until an international
peacekeeping force comes ashore.
In Geneva, the U.N.'s World Food Program said Israel had agreed to permit two
oil tankers to sail into Lebanon to ease a growing fuel crisis in the country.
At least 540 Lebanese have been killed, including 468 civilians and 26
Lebanese soldiers and at least 46 Hezbollah guerrillas. The health minister says
the toll could be as high as 750, including those still buried in rubble or
missing. Fifty-five Israelis have died ?a 36 soldiers and 19 civilians killed in
Hezbollah rocket attacks.
The United Nations warned that the longer a spill of 110,000 barrels of oil
is not cleaned up from Lebanon's coast, the more severe the environmental impact
will be. The oil spilled two weeks ago after Israeli warplanes hit a coastal
power plant.
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