World

Israel Continues To Hit Hard

August 1, 2006 / 10:44 AM EDT / CBS/AP

Israeli jets pounded Shiite villages in Lebanon on Tuesday, and also struck Hezbollah strongholds deep inside the country and other civilian areas along the Mediterranean coast.

Israeli media reported heavy fighting on the ground, too, around the southern Lebanese town of Ayta a-Shab.

At least 20 Hezbollah guerrillas have been wounded or killed in ground fighting with Israeli troops in the past 48 hours, the army said Tuesday. The army could not provide a breakdown of killed and wounded, but said the casualties stemmed from fighting around the village of Taybeh in south Lebanon. The Arab satellite TV station Al Arabiya reported that Hezbollah denied the fighters were killed.

Officials say Israel's expanded ground offensive in Lebanon could last 10 days to two weeks, reports CBS News correspondent Robert Berger. The plan is to move up to the Litani River, at least 12 miles from the Israeli border, and drive Hezbollah fighters out. Israel would hold the territory until an international force takes over.

There is no talk of a cease-fire in Israel, reports CBS News correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi.

In other developments:

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 said Tuesday, but "There is no plan to initiate a war with Syria," Defense Minister Amir Peretz said.

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 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. "The U.N. Security Council has proven its uselessness and ineffectiveness during this (Israeli) aggression," Manouchehr Mottaki told reporters after meeting with Lebanese President Emile Lahoud, a strong Hezbollah ally.

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. The strike occurred near the town of Beit Hanoun, but it was not clear who or what the air force was targeting, the officials said. The army said it was checking the report.

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. Only 13 percent are not satisfied. Nearly three-fourths approved of the government's handling of the war.

Artillery rained down on the villages of Deir Mimas and Kfar Kila. The two villages sit next to one another on the side of a rocky hill.

Intense shelling had ended by early afternoon, though sporadic attacks continued.

Hezbollah said on its Al-Manar TV on Tuesday that 20 Israeli soldiers were killed or wounded in the border village of Aita al-Shaab. Israel had no immediate public comment.

The guerrilla group said it continued to fight Israeli ground troops in Kfar Kila, Adaisse, and Taibeh, near the Christian town of Marjayoun, about 5 miles from the border with Israel. It released a statement saying four of its fighters died in the battles.

Hezbollah said its militants repulsed an Israeli incursion into Adaisse and Kfar Kila, forcing them behind the border after inflicting casualties. The statement said the troops crossed the border Monday night.

A Hezbollah member of the Lebanese parliament vowed that strong resistance is in store if the Israel tries to conquer the villages in the south.

"Let us remember what happened in Maroun al-Ras and Bint Jbeil," Hasan Fadallah told Israel's Ynet news site. "This is what will happen to the Israeli army in any place it enters."

Israeli warplanes launched three air raids on targets along the Litani River, Lebanon's official news agency reported. They were accompanied by artillery shelling against villages in the central region of south Lebanon.

Israel's Cabinet late Monday approved a major expansion of its ground offensive, deciding to send troops up to the Litani, some 18 miles from the Israeli border.

A Lebanese government official on Tuesday denounced that decision, saying Israel was repeating the same mistakes it made in the past 30 years by invading the area.

"This will not help (Israel) achieve the security that it is looking for," the official told The Associated Press. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

"Security and stability can only be achieved by an Israeli withdrawal from occupied Lebanese territories, not by expanding the occupation," he said.

"Israel isn't necessarily in a big hurry to see a peace deal and we have to hope that they can be talked into a quicker decision to accept an international force before Hezbollah, in turn, changes its position and then goes ahead and decides it no longer will they tolerate this international force," Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution said on CBS News' The Early Show. "The whole thing could fall apart."

The key for U.S. relations with the Arab world, says O'Hanlon, is getting the international peacekeeping force in place as soon as possible.

"At first, the Arab world seemed to tolerate some kind of Israeli response against Hezbollah, which people saw as the cause of the problem," he told co-anchor Julie Chen. "But that's gone and at this point, the Arab world really feels Israel has gone too far and the U.S. has gone way too far in essentially giving blanket endorsement of what Israel has wanted to do."

Tuesday's air strikes mean that two of the four border crossings between Syria and Lebanon are now closed because of damage. Repeated air strikes have made the main Beirut-Damascus highway impassable.

The remaining crossings are Lebanon's main transport links to the outside world. Israel has hit the Beirut international airport, forcing its closure, and has imposed a naval blockade. Late last week the airport began receiving aid relief flights on a repaired runway.

The latest bombings came despite a supposed 48-hour Israeli suspension of air aids in Lebanon, prompted by worldwide outcry over an air strike Sunday that killed 56 people, more than half of them children, on the southern Lebanese village of Qana. The pause, which ends early Wednesday, was to give time for an investigation into the Qana attack, but Israel said its warplanes would still hit targets that presented an imminent threat, and at least three strikes were launched Monday.

Many of those living in the northeast are Shiite Muslims, the country's largest sect from which Hezbollah draws its support.