Israel’s military leaders Friday readied its army and people for intense ground battles in southern Lebanon by massing troops at the border, calling up thousands of reservists and characterizing the fight to wrench Hezbollah from its border as a “supreme mission.”
Meanwhile, the United States is rushing a delivery of precision-guided bombs to Israel, part of an arms shipment that was approved last year but is being expedited in anticipation of a prolonged aerial campaign by Israel in Lebanon, The New York Times reported in its Saturday editions.
Israeli army chief of staff Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz, in a televised news briefing, warned that an expanded ground war against the radical Shiite Muslim group could be painful but “we will fight terror wherever it is because if we do not fight it, it will fight us.”
The Israeli general’s blunt words came as the border war spun on for a 10th day and muted efforts by the international community did nothing to calm the violence.
In Washington, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced she would be departing Sunday for a round of talks in the region. But she reiterated the Bush administration’s position that a cease-fire would be premature, and that it sees “Hezbollah as the problem” in the border war.
“A cease-fire would be a false promise if it simply returns us to the status quo,” Rice said. “We do seek an end to the current violence, we seek it urgently. We also seek to address the root causes of that violence.”
The pace of the U.S. effort has essentially given Israel a free hand in attacking Hezbollah, a political and militant organization that both nations see as a terrorist force. Hostilities erupted after Hezbollah abducted two Israeli soldiers inside Israel last week.
Halutz, who appeared to be pumping up Israeli resolve in his news briefing Friday, said the Israeli forces had killed 100 Hezbollah fighters in the past few days and flattened some of their infrastructure. Five Israeli soldiers died in ground combat Thursday. So far, there have been small troop incursions into Lebanon, largely to find Hezbollah bunkers hiding rocket launchers, army officials said. Troop and tank deployments reported Friday night by local media indicated a more robust effort would begin shortly. Israeli forces also leafleted communities miles into Lebanon to warn residents to evacuate. Halutz acknowledged that combat losses were likely in the Lebanese countryside, which is studded with hidden Hezbollah bunkers. “[But] there is a supreme mission before us, a mission to restore security to ourselves, to all citizens of the state of Israel,” he said.
The head of the northern command, Maj. Gen. Udi Adam, said the next phase of battle could last weeks, longer than previously predicted. Israeli officials have said as much as half of Hezbollah’s arsenal has been destroyed, but it is also believed that the fighters are regularly stocked with arms flowing from Iran and Syria.
Israel first launched aerial bombardments in southern Lebanon and Shiite neighborhoods of Beirut to force the release of its soldiers. Israeli warplanes have since claimed roads, bridges and Beirut’s airport as legitimate targets because of their possible use by Hezbollah.
On Friday, Israeli missiles pounded targets along the main Beirut-Damascus highway and the ancient city of Baalbek as well as across southern Lebanon. Hezbollah militants lobbed rockets on the northern Israeli city of Haifa, wounding 19 people. A UN military post on the border was also hit by gunfire, but no one was injured.
In the southern city of Tyre, meanwhile, Lebanese soldiers buried 72 people killed in recent bombings in a mass grave just outside a barracks, The Associated Press reported. Volunteers put the bodies, many of them children, in wooden coffins and spray-painted the names of the dead on the lids.
In what appears to be the bloodiest single incident of the war so far, it was reported that 50 civilians died and 150 were injured in a strike Wednesday on a civil defense building in the village of Srifa where people had gathered for refuge from bombings.
Injured people are trapped in the rubble, but rescue teams have been unable to help, according to a Lebanese Red Cross spokesman. A Lebanese army convoy tried to reach the site Friday but was fired on and turned back, he said.
“This is the situation all over the south. There are bodies in the rubble, but the ambulances cannot move,” he said.
More Top Picks Best Vr Headsets
Israeli army officials said Israel would allow a road to be opened for humanitarian aid to be ferried to the Lebanese people.
The suffering in Lebanon has generated much criticism in the Muslim world. Thousands of people turned out for Friday’s Islamic day of prayer to protest Israel’s attacks and urged Sunni-Shiite unity against the Jewish state.
In Egypt, thousands gathered outside Cairo’s Al-Azhar Mosque, the most prominent Sunni Muslim institution in the Arab world, to wave posters of Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah.
The Lebanese Health Ministry reported 362 deaths in Lebanon so far in the onslaught, an increase of 55 since it released figures Thursday. Thirty-four Israelis also have been killed, including 18 soldiers and an air force officer killed Friday in the collision of two helicopters.
UN officials estimated a half-million Lebanese people have been displaced by the conflict, with an estimated 130,000 fleeing to Syria. Tens of thousands of foreigners also have been evacuated or have left the country.
On Friday, the Lebanese government ordered its army to be ready to respond to a full-scale invasion.
———-