Israeli Raids Follow Cease-Fire Vote
Israeli air strikes and ground attacks continued on Saturday despite a U.N. resolution for a cease-fire, with missiles and artillery killing at least 19 people across Lebanon, mostly in the south.
The deadliest attack was on homes in the village of Rachaf, 4 miles from the Israeli border, where at least 15 civilians were killed, security officials said.
The Israeli army said it targeted "the exact point from which Hezbollah fired" at its troops. "This is just another example of the fact that Hezbollah is using civilians as human shields," a spokesman said.
A woman who escaped the Rachaf bombings walked 9 miles to a village near Tyre, but rescuers were unable to reach her there because of raids on a coastal road, civil defense workers said.
Israeli missiles also hit a vehicle in Kharayeb, a village in the Zahrani region about halfway between Beirut and the Israeli border, killing three people and wounding five, officials said.
A Lebanese soldier was killed overnight in an air raid near an army base in the western Bekaa Valley, the army said.
Israel said its troops killed more than 40 Hezbollah fighters in the last 24 hours, but the guerrilla group announced four deaths Friday and none Saturday. It did not specify when or where they died.
Hezbollah said it killed seven Israeli soldiers and destroyed 21 tanks in heavy ground fighting in the south. The statement on Al-Manar TV did not say where they died, but another one said fighters ambushed tank columns in the Wadi al-Hujair valley southwest of Marjayoun, calling the area a "graveyard" for Israeli armor. Israel had no immediate comment.
An earlier Hezbollah statement said Israeli ground troops were trying to push west from Taibeh and Qantara, on an axis about 5 miles from the Israeli border. It said guerrillas destroyed 16 Israeli tanks and killed or wounded a "large number" of Israeli soldiers there.
An Israeli airstrike destroyed a road leading to the only remaining border crossing to Syria — Arida, on the northern coast — severing the last escape route for besieged Lebanese and for humanitarian aid entering the country.
Israeli jets targeted the highway linking Arida with the northern city of Tripoli, at a point about 5 miles from the border, officials said. The crossing remained open, but the road leading to it was impassable, and vehicles were spotted driving off-road through ditches early Saturday.
Shrapnel from missiles fired on the village of Insariyeh, halfway between Sidon and Tyre, hit a vehicle carrying Lebanese journalists working for a Swedish television channel, and one of them was wounded, security officials said.
An airstrike hit near Mansouri on the coast, halfway between Tyre and the Israeli border, wounding seven people, civil defense officials said. Villages along the road south of Tyre endured heavy bombing on Saturday, international Red Cross spokesman Roland Huguenin said.
Electricity was out in Tyre and Sidon, after Israeli warplanes struck transformers at power plants in both coastal cities. An official at the power plant in Sidon, George Makhoul, said it could be 10 days before power was restored.
Israel denied attacking any power plants in Tyre, but an army spokesman said "perhaps an electricity wire was hit" by Israeli warplanes.
Security officials reported several air strikes in Akkar province, located about 60 miles north of Beirut.
In other developments:
The draft, adopted unanimously, offers the best chance yet for peace after more than four weeks of war in the Middle East. It was the first significant action by the Security Council, the most powerful U.N. body, to address the crisis.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said hundreds of millions of people around the world shared his frustration that the council had taken so long to act. That inaction has "badly shaken the world's faith in its authority and integrity," he said.
"I would be remiss if I did not tell you how profoundly disappointed I am that the council did not reach this point much, much earlier," he said.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert endorsed the resolution late Friday, after a day of dramatic brinksmanship including a threat to expand the ground war in Lebanon. Israeli officials said Israel would not halt fighting until Israel's Cabinet has approved the cease-fire deal in its weekly meeting Sunday.
The key to Olmert's approval of the cease-fire resolution was that U.N. peacekeepers would have the right to use force, reports CBS News correspondent Lee Cowan. As the U.N. troops move in, in theory, Israeli troops would move out.
Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora also assured Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that his country backed the resolution. Saniora signaled that his Cabinet would approve the plan when it met later Saturday. "This resolution shows that the whole world stood by Lebanon," he told reporters.
Rice said the "hard work of diplomacy" was only beginning with the passage of the resolution and that it would be unrealistic to expect an immediate end to all violence. She said the United States would increase its assistance to Lebanon to $50 million, and demanded other nations stay out of its affairs.
"Today we call upon every state, especially Iran and Syria, to respect the sovereignty of the Lebanese government and the will of the international community," Rice told the council.