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Major Israeli Operation Launched

Israel launched its deepest ground attack into Lebanon, and Hezbollah said its guerrillas were fighting Israeli commandos trapped inside a hospital in the eastern city of Baalbek on Wednesday.

The Israeli army would not comment on the operation in the ancient city, which was once a Syrian army headquarters some 130 kilometers north of Israel. The Web site of the Israeli daily Haaretz reported that "helicopters put down IDF (military) commandos near Baalbek," without adding details.

Hezbollah's chief spokesman, Hussein Rahal, told The Associated Press that Israeli troops landed near Dar al-Hikma Hospital and that fierce fighting was raging after more than one hour.

Four hours into the operation fighting continued, witnesses said. Israeli warplanes staged more than 10 bombing runs at in the early hours Wednesday around the hospital as well as on hills in east and north Baalbek. The planes also dropped flares over the city while heavy fighting was raging around the hospital, they added.

Shortly after the Israeli air raids began, electricity was cut off, plunging Baalbek and other neighboring villages in total darkness.

The ferocity of the battles in Baalbek and across southern Lebanon, the determination of the Israelis to keep fighting and the minimal diplomatic progress toward a cease-fire all indicate the three-week-old war is more likely to escalate than end soon.

Some wonder why the offensive is taking so long, reports CBS News correspondent Sharon Alfonsi. In 1982, Israeli ground troops seized all of southern Lebanon in 48 hours. This time, it's taken three weeks and Hezbollah is still holding ground and fighting hard.

"The United States is disappointed by the performance of the Israeli military," military analyst Amir Oren told Alfonsi. "It has been less than expected. Nevertheless, U.S. wants Israel to push on."

In other developments:

  • Israel's Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres told the White House that the Jewish state is "nearing a decision" in its showdown with Hezbollah. However, Peres told reporters it still could be weeks before Israel's military campaign wraps up. Peres added that Israel has been making good progress against the Shiite militia in south Lebanon. He says three-quarters of Hezbollah's long-range rockets have been destroyed, hundreds of guerrillas have been killed and most of the group's bases have been demolished.
  • France is refusing to participate in a meeting of nations that could send troops to help monitor a cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah, even though it may join - and possibly even lead - such a force. The decision is a setback for the U.N. Security Council as it tries to determine the size and mandate of any peacekeeping force. CBS News foreign affairs analyst Pamela Falk notes that problems between the U.S. and France, related to differences in views on Iran's role in the region and the funding of Hezbollah, may have contributed to France's refusal to participate in the meetings.
  • The United Nations canceled several aid convoys to southern Lebanon Tuesday because it couldn't get guarantees of safe passage from Israel, reports CBS News correspondent Lee Cowan.
  • Israel will target every vehicle carrying weapons from Syria into Lebanon, but is not trying to provoke a war with Syria, Israel's defense minister, Amir Peretz, said Tuesday.
  • Britain and Germany rejected a draft European Union statement Tuesday calling for an immediate cease-fire, diplomats said. Instead, the two nations offered an alternative draft calling for an eventual "cessation of hostilities" — with no time frame given.
  • Iran's foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, on Tuesday blasted the U.N. Security Council for failing to stop the Israel-Hezbollah conflict, and called the U.S. and Israel "partners in these brutal crimes" against Lebanese civilians.
  • A senior Iranian cleric, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, the hard-line head of the powerful Guardian Council, has called on Muslim states to provide weapons to Hezbollah to fight Israel, an Iranian news agency reported Tuesday.
  • Israel's air force fired missiles in northern Gaza on Tuesday, killing a 14-year-old boy and wounding four others, Palestinian officials said.
  • Despite the high civilian casualties in Lebanon, a polls show 85 percent of Israelis are satisfied with the army's actions in Lebanon so far, reports Berger.

    In the south, thousands of Israeli troops were operating all along the Israel-Lebanon border on Tuesday. Additional soldiers had crossed into Lebanon during the day, Israeli defense officials said, joining forces already fighting there for three days.

    They entered through four different points along the border and progressed at least four miles inside Lebanon. Thousands of reservists, called up over the weekend, also were gathering at staging areas on the Israeli side of the border, ready to join the battles and extend the range of the invasion.

    In announcing the expanded operation, Israeli officials 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.

    But the army later said it had distributed leaflets northeast of the river at villages where Hezbollah was active; the leaflets told people to leave, suggesting that the new offensive could take Israeli soldiers even deeper into Lebanon.

    The Israelis want to keep Hezbollah off the border so their patrols and civilians along the fence are not in danger of attack, such as the July 12 raid in which guerrillas killed three soldiers and seized two others. The army also hopes to push Hezbollah far enough north so that most of the guerrillas' rockets cannot reach the Jewish state.

    Despite mounting civilian deaths, President Bush held fast to support for Israel and was pressing for a U.N. resolution linking a cease-fire with a broader plan for peace in the Middle East. Staking out a different approach, European Union foreign ministers called for an "immediate cessation of hostilities" followed by efforts to agree on a sustainable cease-fire.

    Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said it was not in Israel's interest to agree to an immediate cease-fire because every day of fighting weakens the guerrillas.

    "Every additional day is a day that drains the strength of this cruel enemy," he said. "Every extra day is a day in which the (army) reduces their capability, contains their firing ability and their ability to hit in the future."

    Until the arrival of an international force, Israel hopes to create a temporary buffer zone in a region that it occupied for 18 years until 2000. It is not yet clear that an international force will be formed, but the intention would be to bolster the Lebanese military's ability to control southern reaches of the country where Hezbollah has been launching its rocket attacks on Israel.

    Israel resumed sporadic airstrikes — hitting Hezbollah strongholds and supply lines from one end of Lebanon to the other — despite a pledge to suspend such attacks for another day in response to world outrage over the killing of 56 Lebanese in a weekend bombing.

    Hezbollah fired just 10 rockets across the border Tuesday, well below an average of about 100 a day since the fighting began 21 days ago, Israel said.

    But the ground battles were intense.

    At nightfall Tuesday, Israeli troops were fighting Hezbollah at several points along the common border. Reporters and Arab television reported especially heavy fighting and Israeli artillery bombardment at the village of Aita al-Shaab.

    The Israeli army said that three Israeli soldiers died and 25 were slightly wounded by small arms fire and anti-tank rockets in Aita al-Shaab.

    Israeli Cabinet Minister Haim Ramon said the fighting to date had killed about 300 of Hezbollah's main force of 2,000 fighters, which does not include its less-well trained reserves. "That's a very hard blow," he said.

    Hezbollah has said only 46 of its fighters were killed. Four were lost in battles with Israeli ground troops in Adaisse and Taibeh, near the Christian town of Marjayoun, about five miles from the border with Israel, Hezbollah said.

    Israeli jet fighters also struck deep inside Lebanese territory, hitting Hermel, 75 miles north of the Israeli border in the Bekaa Valley. Warplanes fired at least five air-to-surface missiles on the edge of the town, targeting a road linking eastern Lebanon to western regions and the coastline.

    In the west, Israeli warships fired artillery into the villages of Mansouri, Shamaa and Teir Harfan around the port city of Tyre. No casualties were reported.

    Another strike at an area near the Syrian border, about six miles north of Hermel, targeted the Qaa-Homs road, one of four official crossing points between Lebanon and Syria. Two of the four border crossings are now closed because of damage, and repeated airstrikes have made the main Beirut-Damascus highway impassable.

    The deaths of 56 Lebanese in the devastating weekend strike in Qana focused attention on civilian casualties.

    Three more civilians were killed and three seriously wounded when Israeli warplanes hit a house in the southern Lebanese town of Lweizeh, Lebanese security officials said Tuesday.

    Also, the Lebanese Red Cross said the bodies of 12 civilians were retrieved from the rubble of buildings destroyed in airstrikes on four villages in southern Lebanon and many more were believed still buried. It was not clear when the victims were killed.

    At least 532 Lebanese have been killed, including 461 civilians and 25 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-four Israelis have died — 36 soldiers as well as 18 civilians killed in Hezbollah rocket attacks.

    But human lives are not the only casualties of this war. The United Nations warned Tuesday 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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