Israel Decides Not to Expand Offensive But Calls Up 30,000 Soldiers

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JERUSALEM (AP) – Israel’s government on Thursday called up at least 30,000 troops to begin training for duty in the offensive against Hezbollah, and Lebanese officials estimated a civilian death toll as high as 600 with fighting in its third week.

Also Thursday, Hezbollah’s leader reportedly was to meet with Syrian and Iranian officials in Damascus, and a top Israeli official said that world leaders _ in failing to call for an immediate cease-fire during a Rome summit _ gave Israel a green light to push harder to wipe out the Lebanese guerrillas.

Lebanese Health Minister Jawad Khalifeh said the estimated 600 killed included 150-200 civilians believed to be buried in the rubble of collapsed buildings.

The toll was a jump from previous Health Ministry reports of around 400 killed, based on bodies received at Lebanese hospitals. As of Wednesday, 51 Israelis had been killed in the campaign, according to Israel’s military.

Meanwhile, al-Qaida threatened new attacks in response to Israel’s offensive, its first comment on the conflict. Israeli jets pounded suspected Hezbollah positions across Lebanon on Thursday, as guerrilla rockets continued to hit northern Israel.

The high-level conference in Rome ended Wednesday with most European leaders urging an immediate cease-fire but the United States willing to give Israel more time to punish Hezbollah and ensure an international peacekeeping force for south Lebanon.

“We received yesterday at the Rome conference permission from the world …. to continue the operation, this war, until Hezbollah won’t be located in Lebanon and until it is disarmed,” Israeli Justice Minister Haim Ramon told Israel’s Army Radio.

“Everyone understands that a victory for Hezbollah is a victory for world terror,” said Ramon, believed to be close to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

In line with other EU countries, Germany called Israel’s interpretation of the Rome meeting outcome a “gross misunderstanding,” insisting the declaration in no way indicated that Israel should continue attacks on Lebanon.

“I would say just the opposite _ yesterday in Rome it was clear that everyone present wanted to see an end to the fighting as swiftly as possible,” German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said in Berlin.

President Bush declined to criticize Israel’s tactics against Hezbollah and sharply condemned of Iran’s role in the bloody conflict. Iran and Syria are Hezbollah’s key backers.

“Hezbollah attacked Israel. I know Hezbollah is connected to Iran,” Bush said tersely in Washington. “Now is the time for the world to confront this danger.”

The al-Qaida threat, in a videotape by Osama bin Laden deputy Ayman al-Zawahri, was the first sign the terror network aims to exploit Israel’s two-pronged offensive _ against Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas-linked militants in Gaza _ to rally Islamic militants.

“We cannot just watch these shells as they burn our brothers in Gaza and Lebanon and stand by idly, humiliated,” al-Zawahri said, adding that “all the world is a battlefield open in front of us.”

“The war with Israel … is a jihad (holy war) for the sake of God and will last until (our) religion prevails … from Spain to Iraq,” he said. “We will attack everywhere.”

Israel launched attacks in Gaza after Palestinian Hamas-linked militants captured an Israeli soldier June 25. As that conflict raged, Hezbollah grabbed two soldiers in a July 12 cross-border raid, sparking Israel’s massive assault on Lebanon.

So far, 17 days of bombardment and recent, intense ground fighting have been unable to stop Hezbollah rocket attacks. The Israeli military, in a radio broadcast, warned Lebanese in the south Thursday that their villages would be “totally destroyed” if missiles are fired from them.

Hezbollah has fired more than 1,400 rockets into Israel during the offensive, including 48 on Thursday.

Israeli airstrikes Thursday pounded roads and suspected Hezbollah residences in the south and east, as well as a Lebanese army base in the north, while artillery and warplanes barraged the border region where ground fighting continued.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she was prepared to make a second tour of the Middle East but did not say when.

“I am more than happy to go back,” Rice said, if her efforts can “move toward a sustainable cease-fire that would end the violence.” She spoke in Malaysia after attending the Rome conference. Rice held talks in Beirut and Jerusalem earlier in the week.

Meanwhile, a top Iranian envoy was in Syria for talks on the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict, according Kuwaiti and Iranian news reports.

Iran’s Mehr news agency said Ali Larijani, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, was in Damascus for meetings, but gave no other details. Similar reports were carried by the Iranian Labor News Agency and the Fars agency.

Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah was to take part in the talks, which will include Syrian President Bashar Assad, according to Kuwait’s Al-Siyassah newspaper, known for its opposition to the Syrian regime.

It said the meeting was designed to discuss ways to maintain supplies to Hezbollah fighters with “Iranian arms flowing through Syrian territories.”

During a session Thursday with Israel’s security Cabinet, Olmert said the goals of Israel’s offensive are being met, participants said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose details of the discussion.

The Cabinet gave the army permission to prepare three additional reserve divisions to refresh troops in Lebanon, if needed. The large size of the mobilization _ one division has 12,000 to 15,000 soldiers _ raised questions about officials’ insistence that they were not contemplating a wider offensive.

Israeli Defense Minister Amir Halutz said the mobilization was not meant to threaten anyone but rather to make the army ready for “all possibilities.”

He also said the Jewish state “will not allow the Hezbollah flag to be flown on the borders of Israel,” and that Israel had no intention of waging war against Syria.

In his interview with Army Radio, Ramon also said the Israeli air force must bomb villages before ground forces enter, suggesting that this would help prevent Israeli casualties in the future.

Asked whether entire villages should be flattened, he said: “These places are not villages. They are military bases in which Hezbollah people are hiding and from which they are operating.”

Thousands of civilians are believed to be trapped in villages across the border region in southern Lebanon, according to humanitarian officials. Americans who escaped a village near the epicenter of the ground fighting said Wednesday many U.S. citizens were still there.

Across the south Thursday, Israeli jets carried out more than 30 bombing runs in the apple-growing region of Iqlim al-Tuffah, striking empty houses of alleged Hezbollah activists. The strikes caused a number of casualties, but fighting kept ambulances and civil defense crews from the scene, security officials and witnesses said.

Other strikes hit the nearby southern market town of Nabatiyeh, wounding at least three people. A hit on a road in Rayak, a few miles from the Lebanese-Syrian border, wounded two soldiers and a civilian, officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to make statements to the media.

A Lebanese policeman was killed when an Israeli missile struck his car in the eastern city of Zahle, security officials said.


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