Siniora Urges Hezbollah To Release Soldiers

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JERUSALEM — With fighting in its seventh day, Israeli warplanes struck an army base outside Beirut and other areas in south Lebanon, killing 17 people, and Hezbollah rockets battered Israeli towns, killing one Israeli.

Families in southern Lebanon, the site of most Israeli airstrikes, drove north on side roads, winding among orange and banana groves and waving improvised white flags from their car windows.

In an interview with the BBC, Prime Minister Siniora of Lebanon said Israel is “opening the gates of hell and madness” on his country. He urged Hezbollah, which is backed by Syria and Iran, to release two captured Israeli soldiers but said Israel’s response had been disproportionate.

President Bush said he suspects Syria is trying to reassert influence in Lebanon more than a year after Damascus ended what had effectively been a long-term military occupation of its smaller, weaker neighbor.

“We have made it very clear that Israel should be allowed to defend herself,” Mr. Bush said in Washington. “We’ve asked that as she does so that she be mindful of the Siniora government. It’s very important that this government in Lebanon succeed and survive.”

Prime Minister Olmert blamed Iran for sparking the clashes between Israel and Hezbollah, saying the country was trying to distract the world from the controversy over its nuclear program.

The offensive was sparked by the soldiers’ capture July 12 but has now broadened into a campaign to neutralize Hezbollah.

The army’s deputy chief of staff, Major General Moshe Kaplinsky, said Israel has not ruled out deploying “massive ground forces into Lebanon.”

Israel, which has mainly limited itself to attacks from the air and sea, had been reluctant to send in ground troops because Hezbollah is far more familiar with the terrain and because of memories of Israel’s ill-fated 18-year-occupation of south Lebanon that ended in 2000.

But General Kaplinsky said Israel had no intention of getting bogged down for a second time.

“We certainly won’t reach months, and I hope it also won’t be many more weeks. But we still need time to complete the operation’s very clear objectives,” he told Israel Radio.

An Israeli Cabinet minister, Avi Dichter, said the country may consider a prisoner swap with Lebanon to win the soldiers’ release, but only after the military operation.

The Israeli air force kept up its strikes across southern Lebanon yesterday. At least five people were killed when a bomb hit a house in the village of Aitaroun, near the border, witnesses said. Israeli warplanes also struck southern Beirut and hit four trucks that Israeli officials said were bringing in weapons.

“That is intolerable terrorist activity,” an Israeli army spokesman, Captain Jacob Dallal, said.

Hezbollah guerrillas fired a barrage of rockets into northern Israel yesterday afternoon, killing a man in the town of Nahariya and setting fire to the top of a two-story apartment building.

At least 100 rockets fell into Israel, hitting a string of towns, including the city of Haifa.

More than 750 rockets have hit Israel since the violence began, forcing hundreds of thousands of Israelis to take cover in underground shelters.

Some 500,000 people have been displaced in Lebanon by the violence, according to the United Nations’ most recent estimate.


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