Israel, Losing 8, Suffers Deadliest Day

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JERUSALEM — Hezbollah ambushed an Israeli patrol yesterday, killing eight soldiers and injuring 22, as the army became bogged down in close-quarter combat over a town several miles inside Lebanon.

The deaths are likely to carry enormous weight in Israel, where military commentators are already complaining that the army has blundered into a conflict with inadequate intelligence.

The soldiers were moving toward the town of Bint Jbeil — which was said to be under the control of the army — when they were attacked by a heavily armed Hezbollah group.

It was highest single death toll since the crisis began when Hezbollah fighters crossed the border and seized two Israeli soldiers.

“We knew well that we are entering a dangerous nest, and the nest needs to be taken care of slowly,” Major Tzvika Golan said. Asked how the army was progressing in Lebanon, he said: “Slowly, house by house, village by village. We are doing our best to take out all of Hezbollah.”

According to Israeli radio, it took at least seven hours to evacuate the wounded troops after the ambush. Hezbollah gloried in its success. “The

bodies of the soldiers remained on the ground amid the destroyed and burning vehicles,” an announcer on its Al-Manar TV said. Israeli security sources estimate that the number of Hezbollah dead as of Tuesday at more than 130. Hezbollah has so far acknowledged losing 28 fighters.

Evidence of the hard battle for Bint Jbeil, a Hezbollah stronghold, was clearly discernible from the border. In the Israeli hilltop town of Malkiya,2 1/2 miles from the border, 150 mm artillery shells fired from behind the town could be seen crashing into Bint Jbeil, raising 100-foot plumes of dust.

Heavy fighting continued despite initial claims that Israel had captured the town four days ago and then claims later that it “controlled” it.

“There are many people in the town and they are all terrorists,” the Galilee division commander, Brigadier General Gal Hirsch, said. Asked if there were women or children there, he said the few who had been encountered had been escorted from the field.

Bint Jbeil, two weeks ago a town of at least 30,000, has great symbolic importance for the Shiite Muslim Hezbollah guerrillas. It holds the largest Shiite community in the border area and was known as the “capital of the resistance.”

Clearing Bint Jbeil also could be part of Israel’s plan to establish a no-go zone for the guerrillas in southern Lebanon until an international force arrives to take over. Nearer the border, there were further clashes and five more Israeli casualties in the Lebanese town of Maroun al-Ras.

Below it on the Israeli side, worn and weary troops rested in orchards reading newspapers and playing backgammon. “If you want to know what is going on, then go to the hospital,” one resting against the foot of a tree said.

A soldier manning a checkpoint outside Jir’on said: “Why are they using the infantry? Why don’t they just flatten it with the air force?”

With the border sealed by Israeli troops, not much of the reality of fighting only a few miles away has yet percolated back. But at 2 a.m. yesterday, hard evidence was seen when the bodies of six Hezbollah fighters were ferried across.

The power of Israel’s arsenal was given dramatic demonstration when the air force leveled a seven-story apartment block in the center of Tyre last night with a precision missile strike that caused panic among the city’s few remaining inhabitants.

The 15-year-old building was targeted because it had housed the office of Hezbollah’s southern commander, Sheik Nabil Kaouk. It was apparently vacant. A few people from neighboring buildings suffered minor injuries, mostly caused by flying glass.

Fighting flared up in the Gaza Strip yesterday, with Israeli forces reportedly killing up to 21 Palestinian Arabs, including three young girls.

The latest casualties, most of them Palestinian Arab fighters, were said to have been caused by Israeli warplanes and artillery, which have pounded the coastal territory as world attention has been concentrated on the crisis in Lebanon. An air assault has been backed on the ground by tanks and armored bulldozers, which are occupying fields and orchards sometimes used as cover by militants when they launch attacks.

Latest estimates suggest that 137 Palestinian Arabs, half of them civilians, have been killed since Israel launched its military campaign in Gaza a month ago.


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