BEIRUT, 28 July 2006 — Israel insisted yesterday it had been given the green light from a world meeting on Lebanon to press on with its deadly war on Hezbollah and vowed to step up its air offensive after suffering its biggest single-day military loss in the conflict.
But as Israeli warplanes went into action again across Lebanon, the Security Cabinet decided to limit ground offensives in its northern neighbor after the killing of nine troops in fierce battles with Hezbollah fighters on Wednesday.
At least nine people were killed as combat jets bombarded Hezbollah strongholds in south Lebanon and the eastern Bekaa Valley, bringing the death toll to 414 people in Lebanon alone as the conflict entered its 16th day.
“Yesterday in Rome we in effect obtained the authorization to continue our operations until Hezbollah is no longer present in southern Lebanon,” Israeli Justice Minister Haim Ramon told army radio, referring to a 15-nation conference in the Italian capital on Wednesday.
World powers remain at odds over how to end the conflict, despite the mounting death toll and warnings that Lebanon was facing a humanitarian catastrophe, with much of its infrastructure in ruins, hundreds of thousands fleeing their homes and increasing shortages of food and medicines.
Washington, Israel’s closest ally, infuriated Arab opinion by blocking calls at the Rome meeting for an immediate cease-fire and instead calling for efforts to reach a “sustainable” truce.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice meanwhile insisted there had been agreement in Rome on the need for a multinational UN-mandated force for Lebanon and said the world body planned to hold a meeting this week or next.
European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana said yesterday the bloc would be willing to contribute peacekeeping forces to Lebanon if a UN resolution allowed it.
Washington also prevented adoption of a UN Security Council draft resolution critical of Israel after its warplanes killed four UN observers in a raid in a south Lebanon town that UN chief Kofi Annan said was “apparently deliberate.”
At an emergency meeting yesterday, the Israeli Security Cabinet decided to intensify airstrikes on Lebanon and restrict its more risky ground operations for setting up a border buffer zone of a few kilometers, army radio reported.
In its first reaction to Israel’s dual assaults on Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, Al-Qaeda’s No. 2 Ayman Al-Zawahiri warned the network would carry out attacks against Israel and its US backers in revenge.
“We cannot watch these rockets raining down their fire on our brothers in Gaza and Lebanon and remain inactive and submissive,” Zawahiri said in a videotape aired by Arabic television channel Al-Jazeera.
“Everyone who took part in the crime must pay the price... The whole world is an open field for us. Like they attack us everywhere, we too attack them everywhere.”
Israel insists it will not halt its assault until two soldiers captured by Hezbollah on July 12 are freed and the militia is disarmed.
Hezbollah launched another 40 rockets into northern Israel yesterday, damaging buildings but causing no casualties, the army said.
At least nine people, including a Nigerian domestic worker and a gendarme, were killed in Lebanon yesterday in a new wave of Israeli attacks, police said.
Warplanes also fired more than 400 missiles overnight at the hilltop town of Khiam, the site of a former notorious Israeli prison, where the four UN peacekeepers were killed.
At the insistence of Beijing, which had a national among the dead, the UN Security Council was to resume deliberations yesterday on a resolution or statement on the deaths.
But agreement looked elusive after Washington rejected even a draft condemning “any deliberate attack against UN personnel” without any specific reference to the Khiam raid, diplomats said.
