BEIRUT, 17 July 2006 — Lebanon reeled yesterday under devastating Israeli bombardment and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah vowed an unrestrained campaign as eight people were killed in rocket attacks on Israel’s third largest city Haifa.
At least 26 Lebanese were killed in Israeli strikes as the Jewish state pressed on with the fifth day of a blistering offensive that has left much of Lebanon’s infrastructure in tatters and raised fears of all-out regional war.
“We will use all means,” Nasrallah said in an address on Lebanese television. “As long as the enemy has no limits, we will have no limits.”
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia has pledged $50 million in immediate aid to Lebanon, according to the Saudi Press Agency.
“In response to the appeal of Lebanon’s Prime Minister Fuad Siniora, King Abdullah has ordered an immediate transfer of $50 million to be at the PM’s disposal,” it said.
SPA said the aid package is aimed at helping the Lebanese government provide relief and needed services “to reduce the suffering of our brotherly Lebanese people.”
Also, Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa yesterday urged Arab and Islamic countries to support the Lebanese and Palestinian people in the face of Israeli military actions.
He called on Arab states and people to help Lebanon after a call for help by the country’s prime minister.
The rocket attack on the Mediterranean port of Haifa was the deadliest cross-border rocket attack on Israel in decades and strengthened Israel’s resolve to destroy the Shiite group.
“Nothing will deter us, whatever far-reaching ramifications regarding our relations on the northern border and in the region there may be,” said Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
The United States maintained Israel had every right to defend itself but also urged restraint over the offensive, which has split the international community and raised fears of dragging Syria and Iran into the conflict.
Hezbollah claimed it fired dozens of anti-tank missiles on Haifa and warned it would not spare the city if Israel retaliated. The Israeli military ordered residents to flee villages in southern Lebanon, warning of air and artillery operations.
Israeli medics said eight people were killed and dozens wounded by the rocket attacks on Haifa, with most casualties at the main railway station.
Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz vowed Israel would attack all sources of fire in its offensive, regardless of location, issuing a veiled threat to civilians living in Hezbollah strongholds, such as south Beirut.
“All those who attacked Haifa and positions behind our lines will pay a very heavy price,” Peretz told a news conference in Haifa.
“We have given orders that every source of identified fire will be struck no matter where it is,” he added.
But despite the rocket attacks on Haifa and the northern coastal towns of Nahariya and Shavei Zion, Peretz said Israel had no plans to reoccupy Lebanon and “get bogged down in the Lebanese quagmire.”
The attack on Haifa came as Israeli jets showed no sign of letting up with an ever-widening assault on Lebanon that has almost completely cut it off from the outside world with its airport shut and ports blockaded.
In the deadliest raid, at least 10 civilians were killed and 20 others wounded in an Israeli airstrike on a Lebanese military office with a radar installation in the southern port city of Tyre, hospital sources said.
The new deaths yesterday brought to 129 the number of people killed in the Israeli offensive which began last Wednesday, according to an AFP tally based on official and medical sources.
In the highest profile visit since the crisis-began, European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana arrived in Lebanon for talks and was due to meet with Prime Minister Siniora. Governments worldwide were drawing up emergency plans to evacuate their nationals from Lebanon, but world powers appeared sharply divided on how to end the conflict and avoid all-out regional conflict.
Siniora had called Saturday for an immediate UN-sponsored cease-fire to halt the fiercest Israeli assault on its northern neighbor in 10 years and to stop Israel’s “collective punishment.” The offensive has put Lebanon under an air and sea blockade, with wave after wave of airstrikes that have shut the international airport, destroyed bridges and roads.
Shell-shocked Beirut residents were stocking up on basic goods and making plans to flee to the relative safety of the mountains outside the capital.
Early yesterday, airstrikes hit Hezbollah’s television station in Beirut’s southern suburbs and other targets across southern Lebanon.
Siniora declared Lebanon a “disaster zone” and appealed for urgent international help for a country that was slowly rebuilding after a devastating 15-year civil war and the end of a three-decade Syrian military presence.
