Israel steps up assault on Beirut suburbs
(AP)
Updated: 2006-07-16 08:50 _Fleeing refugees, including women and children, were cut down on a road
adjacent to the Lebanese-Israeli border in an airstrike as they left the village
of Marwaheen. The bodies of several children, one headless, were sprawled on the
ground. Police said 15 were killed in the afternoon attack and an Associated
Press photographer counted 12 bodies in the two cars.
_At least three civilians were killed when another Israeli airstrike hit a
bridge near the Syrian border, cutting the last land link on the main road to
Syria and its capital, Damascus.
_In the afternoon, Israeli forces hit central Beirut, striking the port and a
lighthouse on a posh seafront boulevard, a few hundred yards from the campus of
the American University of Beirut. The seaport is adjacent to downtown Beirut, a
district rebuilt at a cost of billions of dollars after the 1975-1990 civil war.
_The brunt of the onslaught focused more and more on Hezbollah's top
leadership in south Beirut and the eastern city of Baalbek. Ambulances raced to
a Baalbek residential neighborhood where black smoke rose from airstrikes.
Israel also targeted the headquarters compound of Hezbollah's leadership in a
crowded Shiite neighborhood of south Beirut for the second straight day.
Hezbollah in turn struck out repeatedly at Israel. Its rockets hit Tiberias
three times on Saturday, the first attack on the city — 22 miles from Lebanon —
since the 1973 Mideast war. At least two houses were directly hit, but only a
few light injuries were reported, medics said.
Residents were ordered into bomb shelters, and Israeli media reported that
hundreds of tourists were fleeing the city. Police used megaphones to urge
bathers at the Sea of Galilee to seek shelter.
On Israel's second front, against Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip,
Israeli aircraft on Saturday struck the Economy Ministry of the Hamas-led
Palestinian government and three other targets, killing two people, Palestinian
and Israeli officials reported.
Early Sunday, Israeli tanks approached the town of Beit Hanoun in northern
Gaza, across the border from an Israeli town, Sderot, frequently hit by Hamas
guerrilla rockets, residents and Palestinian security officials reported.
Palestinian hospital officials said two people were wounded by Israeli artillery
fire in the area.
Israel attacked Gaza on June 28, three days after Hamas-backed militants
killed two soldiers and captured a third at an army post just inside Israel.
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