Israel Poised For Ground Invasion
Israel massed tanks and troops on the border, called up reserves and warned civilians to flee Hezbollah-controlled southern Lebanon as it prepared Friday for a likely ground invasion to set up a deep buffer zone.
The Israeli army has confirmed that some of its troops have been operating in Lebanon for days although no major incursion has been launched.
An official from the U.N. monitoring force in south Lebanon, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the press, told The Associated Press that between 300 and 500 troops are believed to be Lebanon backed by as many as 30 tanks. The Israeli army confirmed its troops were operating in Lebanon, but would not say how many.
Meanwhile, saying it's time to work urgently to bring stability to the region,
The army's chief of staff said forces would conduct ground operations as needed in Lebanon, but they would be "limited." Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz also said nearly 100 Hezbollah guerrillas have been killed in the offensive in Lebanon.
"We will fight terror wherever it is because if we do not fight it, it will fight us. If we don't reach it, it will reach us," Halutz said in a nationally televised news conference. "We will also conduct limited ground operations as much as needed in order to harm the terror that harms us."
After 10 days of the heaviest bombardment of Lebanon in 24 years, Israel appears to have decided that a large-scale incursion is the only way to push Hezbollah back.
But Israeli leaders are quick offer assurances that this invasion will be different from two decades ago, reports CBS News chief foreign correspondent Lara Logan. Many in Israel still remember the long ordeal their troops faced the last time they invaded Lebanon in 1982, and the costly 18-year occupation that became Israel's Vietnam.
"If we carry out an operation to uproot, let's say, full fortresses — by the way, (there are) incredible fortresses on the border — by Hezbollah with tons and tons of ammunition and explosives in the ground, that doesn't mean we conquer Lebanon," Yitzhak Herzog, an Israeli Security Cabinet member, told Logan.
As sunset approached, long lines of tanks, troops, armored personnel carriers and bulldozers lined up on a two-lane highway in northern Israel. In one area, the soldiers were close enough to see Lebanese villages and homes.
An Israeli military radio station warned residents of 12 border villages in southern Lebanon to leave before 2 p.m. Friday.
In other recent developments:
Israel's U.N. Ambassador Dan Gillerman said Friday he expected the humanitarian corridor to be opened later Friday or Saturday. He said later there would be a land corridor to Sidon and a sea corridor to Cyprus.
The Israeli announcement followed appeals from Secretary-General Kofi Annan and many Arab and Western leaders including French President Jacques Chirac who called for "a humanitarian truce."
The Lebanese health ministry reported 361 deaths in Lebanon so far in the onslaught, an increase of 55 since it release figures on Thursday. Thirty-four Israelis also have been killed, including 18 soldiers and an air force officer killed Friday in the collision of two helicopters.
The count of 361 includes six Hezbollah fighters that the group has confirmed were killed, including three who died Friday. Israel's army chief of staff said Friday that nearly 100 Hezbollah guerrillas have been killed in the offensive in Lebanon, launched after the militant Shiite Muslim group captured two Israeli soldiers on July 12.
The United States, which has resisted calls to press its ally to halt the fighting, was sending Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to the Mideast on Sunday. She ruled out a quick cease-fire as a "false promise" and said "Hezbollah is the source of the problem."
CBS News chief White House correspondent Jim Axelrod reports that the fact that Rice is not coming to Israel until Sunday is an implied green light to Israel to keep hammering at Hezbollah for at least two more days.
"Syria knows what it needs to do and Hezbollah is the source of the problem," Rice said Friday at the State Department as she outlined U.S. hopes for a diplomatic solution to the current crisis. She said she was meeting not only with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert but also with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas as well as with allies at a gathering in Rome.
"The main problem with a cessation of the violence is that the crisis began with a terrorist group, not a nation," said CBS News foreign affairs analyst Pamela Falk, "and now, the Secretary of State, in her trip to the region, needs to hear from Israel and Lebanon as well as address the role that Syria and Iran play in supporting Hezbollah."
The U.N. estimated that a half-million people have been displaced, with 130,000 fleeing to Syria and 45,000 believed to be in need of assistance.
Top Israeli officials said Israel won't stop its offensive until Hezbollah is forced behind the Litani River, 20 miles north of the border, creating a new buffer zone in a region that has already seen 18 years of Israeli presence.
Israel has stepped up its small forays over the border recently, seeking Hezbollah positions, rocket stores and bunkers. Each time it has faced tough resistance.
While the Hezbollah stronghold on Beirut's southern edge is being systematically reduced to rubble, most of the city remains virtually untouched, reports CBS News correspondent Elizabeth Palmer. Shops are open, traffic is heavy, and, because frequent power cuts interrupt air conditioning inside, many in Beirut are outside, by the waterfront, taking in the air.
But despite the lack of attacks and rubble, Palmer reports, the residents are aware that their country and its economy have been badly battered and will take years to recover.
Hezbollah-controlled areas are not as lucky. Israeli warplanes fired missiles that partially collapsed a 1.6-mile suspension bridge linking two steep mountain peaks, part of the Beirut-Damascus highway in central Lebanon. The bridge has been hit several times since the fighting began.
The bombing also set ablaze three buses that had just dropped off passengers in Syria, but the drivers escaped, police said.
Renewed attacks struck the ancient city of Baalbek, a major Hezbollah stronghold, and security officials said two people were killed and 19 wounded. Hezbollah strongholds in south Beirut and elsewhere also were struck overnight, killing one person. Missiles hit a village near the Israeli border, Aita al-Shaab, killing three, officials said.
A house in the border village of Aitaroun was flattened, with 10 people believed inside, but rescuers could not reach it because of shelling, security officials said.
Meanwhile in Northern Israel, at least 11 rockets hit Haifa, Israel's third-largest city, and five people were wounded, with 23 treated for shock. More rockets fell elsewhere in northern Israel, the army said, with strikes reported in Rosh Pina, Safed and in several communities near the Sea of Galilee.
Hezbollah has fired hundreds of rockets from the Lebanese border since fighting began, forcing Israelis into underground shelters. Eight people in Haifa were killed July 16.
Hezbollah said three of its fighters had been killed in the latest fighting, bringing to six the number killed since Israel launched the military campaign against Lebanon after the militant Shiite Muslim group captured two of its soldiers July 12.
Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah shrugged off concerns of a stepped-up Israeli onslaught, saying the captive soldiers held by his guerrillas would be freed only as part of a prisoner exchange brokered through indirect negotiations.
Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 when its forces seized parts of Beirut. It eventually carved out a buffer zone that stopped at the Litani. That zone was reduced gradually but the Israeli presence lasted until 2000, when it withdrew completely.