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Israeli raids claim more lives as foreigners flee Lebanon
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Israeli raids claim more lives as foreigners flee Lebanon
Israel unleashed fierce air strikes on Lebanon yesterday, killing at least 50 civilians and a Hizbollah fighter, as boats and buses left Beirut laden with thousands of foreigners fleeing the eight-day-old conflict.
Despite international diplomatic efforts, there was no sign Israel or its Lebanese Shi’ite Muslim foes were ready to heed the Beirut government’s pleas for an immediate halt to a war that has cost 300 lives in Lebanon and 25 in Israel.
Hizbollah, backed by Syria and Iran, wants to swap two Israeli soldiers it captured on July 12 for Lebanese and Palestinians in Israeli jails. Israel is determined to drive the guerrillas from the south to halt cross-border rocket attacks.
At least 12 Lebanese, including several children, were killed and 30 wounded in an Israeli air strike that destroyed several houses in the southern village of Srifa, residents said. Another 34 civilians were killed in air strikes that hammered other parts of south and east Lebanon, security sources said. Hizbollah said one of its fighters was killed.
“Turning it into a second Iraq ?”</B>
Lebanon’s acting Interior Minister Ahmed Fatfat said Israel was trying to destroy all his country’s infrastructure, not just to attack Hizbollah. “I don’t know what they’re doing, are they turning it into a second Iraq?” he asked.
The conflict has forced about 100,000 Lebanese to flee their homes. Panicked foreigners have flooded out of the country.
More than 2,400 Americans were to be evacuated by air and sea yesterday, the first of up to 8,000 to be taken from Lebanon. About 200 Belgians boarded buses to take them to Syria. France was hoping to move another 850 of its 10,000 citizens in Lebanon by ship to Cyprus through Israel’s naval blockade, after taking out 800 on Tuesday, an embassy source said.
Britain said it had six ships ready to start moving some of the 5,000 citizens it expects to evacuate this week. A Royal Navy warship arrived in Cyprus with 170 British evacuees aboard.
A frenzy of international diplomacy has failed so far to rein in the violence in the Middle East, tangled with wider regional conflicts involving Syria, Iran, Iraq and others.
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CHRONOLOGY
<B>Israel’s interventions in Lebanon </B>
● March 1978 – Israel invades south Lebanon and sets up occupation zone. Most troops withdraw within weeks, leaving behind a 10-km (6-mile) wide zone held by Israel’s Lebanese Christian allies, the South Lebanon Army (SLA).
● January 1979 – Israeli agents detonate a car bomb in west Beirut, killing Ali Hassan Salameh, security chief of PLO’s Fatah group. Salameh, known as Abu Hassan, was one of the plotters of the Munich Olympics attack in 1972.
● June 1982 – Israel invades Lebanon. Syrian army ousted from Beirut and thousands of Palestinian guerrillas under Yasser Arafat leave by sea after bloody 10 week-siege.
● September 1982 – Israel captures Beirut after pro-Israeli Christian leader Bashir Gemayel, who had been elected president, was assassinated. Hundreds of civilians in Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila are killed by Christian militiamen allowed in by Israeli troops.
● May 1983 – Israel and Lebanon sign peace agreement under US patronage. Syria opposes it, and it is never ratified.
● March 1984 – Peace agreement with Israel is cancelled and Lebanese President Amin Gemayel breaks with Israel under Syrian pressure. Hizbollah, the Shi’ite Muslim “Party of God”, makes first public appearance.
● June 1985 – Israel pulls back to a self-declared border security zone in south Lebanon controlled by Israeli forces and their Lebanese militia allies.
● February 1992 – Israeli helicopter gunships rocket car convoy in south Lebanon, killing Hizbollah leader Sheikh Abbas Musawi, his wife and six-year-old son.
● 1993 – In response to rocket attacks by Hizbollah, Israel unleashes “Operation Accountability”, a week-long air, artillery and naval blitz.
● April 1996 – Israel launches 17-day blitz, “Operation Grapes of Wrath”, against south Lebanon and Hizbollah.
● June 1999 – SLA retreats from Jezzine enclave north of Israeli zone it held for 14 years.
● May 2000 – Israel ends 22-year occupation of south Lebanon.
● July 2006 – Israel strikes Beirut airport and blockades Lebanese ports after Hizbollah fighters seized two Israeli soldiers and killed eight. Eight days of attacks in Lebanon kills 300 people.
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