Two Israeli soldiers captured seven killed in Hezbollah attack

[Neo]

NEW YORK (updated on: July 22, 2006, 14:49 PST):

Citing US officials who spoke on Friday on condition of anonymity, the Times said the decision to ship the weapons quickly came after relatively little debate within the administration, and noted in its report that its disclosure threatens to anger Arab governments and others who could perceive Washington as aiding Israel in the manner that Iran has armed Hezbollah.

The munitions are actually part of a multimillion-dollar arms-sale package approved last year which Israel is able to tap when it needs to, the officials told the Times. But some military officers said the request for expedited delivery was unusual and indicated that Israel has many targets it plans to hit in Lebanon.

The arms shipment has not been announced publicly. The officials who described the administration's decision to rush the munitions included employees of two government agencies, one of whom described the shipment as just one example of a broad array of armaments that the United States has long provided Israel, the Times said.

Pentagon and military officials declined to describe in detail the size and contents of the shipment to Israel, the newspaper said, and they would not say whether the munitions were being shipped by cargo aircraft or some other means.

But one US official said the shipment should not be compared to the kind of an "emergency resupply" of dwindling Israeli stockpiles that was provided during the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, according to the Times report.

A spokesman for the Israeli Embassy in Washington told the Times: "We have been using precision-guided munitions in order to neutralise the military capabilities of Hezbollah and to minimize harm to civilians. As a rule, however, we do not comment on Israel's defence acquisitions."

 

[sigatoka]

NEW YORK (updated on: July 22, 2006, 14:49 PST):

Citing US officials who spoke on Friday on condition of anonymity, the Times said the decision to ship the weapons quickly came after relatively little debate within the administration, and noted in its report that its disclosure threatens to anger Arab governments and others who could perceive Washington as aiding Israel in the manner that Iran has armed Hezbollah.

Yes, these weapons will prove very useful for Israel to continue the collective punishment on civilians, infrastructure and economy of the Lebanese people.

 

[Neo]

Yes, these weapons will prove very useful for Israel to continue the collective punishment on civilians, infrastructure and economy of the Lebanese people.

Exactly my thoughts!

 

[Lahori paa jee]

NEW YORK (updated on: July 22, 2006, 14:49 PST):

Citing US officials who spoke on Friday on condition of anonymity, the Times said the decision to ship the weapons quickly came after relatively little debate within the administration, and noted in its report that its disclosure threatens to anger Arab governments and others who could perceive Washington as aiding Israel in the manner that Iran has armed Hezbollah.

The munitions are actually part of a multimillion-dollar arms-sale package approved last year which Israel is able to tap when it needs to, the officials told the Times. But some military officers said the request for expedited delivery was unusual and indicated that Israel has many targets it plans to hit in Lebanon.

The arms shipment has not been announced publicly. The officials who described the administration's decision to rush the munitions included employees of two government agencies, one of whom described the shipment as just one example of a broad array of armaments that the United States has long provided Israel, the Times said.

Pentagon and military officials declined to describe in detail the size and contents of the shipment to Israel, the newspaper said, and they would not say whether the munitions were being shipped by cargo aircraft or some other means.

But one US official said the shipment should not be compared to the kind of an "emergency resupply" of dwindling Israeli stockpiles that was provided during the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, according to the Times report.

A spokesman for the Israeli Embassy in Washington told the Times: "We have been using precision-guided munitions in order to neutralise the military capabilities of Hezbollah and to minimize harm to civilians. As a rule, however, we do not comment on Israel's defence acquisitions."

Read this horrible news in todays papers too. Its foolish on the part of Israel and US to use force to end Hezbollah.

Have they learnt nothing from Afghanistan and Iraq. Have they been able to end Taliban, have they been able to stop suicide attacks in Iraq. :wall:

Those who will lose their parents or childern or loved ones in this Israeli aggression will be the suicide bombers of tmrw

 

[Owais]

they are not eliminating by doing this. they are Increasing their streangth of Hizbullah by killing innocent civilians.

 

[Owais]

Five killed in Israeli air strikes on Lebanon
BEIRUT (updated on: July 23, 2006, 17:55 PST): Israel unleashed more air strikes on Lebanon and Hizbullah fired rockets at Haifa on Sunday as a senior UN official demanded a halt to the violence to allow aid to reach desperate civilians.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, leaving for the Middle East later in the day, has said she will pursue a lasting solution, not an immediate cease-fire. Washington blames Hizbullah and its allies, Syria and Iran, for the conflict.

The Israeli army said it had yet to decide whether to launch a major ground incursion into Lebanon, while Defence Minister Amir Peretz said Israel could accept a new NATO-led peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon to keep Hizbullah guerrillas at bay.

Civilians took the brunt of renewed bombardments in a war that has cost at least 361 lives in Lebanon and 37 in Israel.

"The scenes were horrific. There were wounded people on the road and there was a wounded person in the building too. There was terrible destruction," said factory worker Keren Hagigi at an industrial zone in Haifa hit by Hizbullah rockets.

Israeli warplanes bombed targets in Beirut and east and south Lebanon, killing at least five civilians and wounding about 80, many of them in the southern port of Tyre.

Half a dozen blasts echoed across the Lebanese capital as jets roared over the southern suburbs in the early hours. Air strikes also destroyed a religious centre in the southern port city of Sidon, wounding four people.

A dozen Israeli air raids on the eastern Bekaa Valley destroyed three factories, a house and several bridges, killing at least one civilian and wounding seven. Two other civilians died in a raid on a southern village, security sources said.

Two people were killed and 15 wounded when Hizbullah rockets slammed into apartments and vehicles in Haifa, Israel's third largest city, which lies 35 km (20 miles) south of the border.

Hizbullah said it had hit Haifa with Raad (Thunder) 2 rockets, which are short-range Iranian-made missiles.

HUMANITARIAN CRISIS

UN emergency relief co-ordinator Jan Egeland said the violence must stop to enable major aid efforts to get under way.

"The rockets going into Israel have to stop," he said. "The enormous bombardment that we have seen here with one block after another being levelled has to stop," he said as he toured Beirut's shattered Haret Hreik area, a Hizbullah stronghold.

He said Israeli bombing of the once-crowded district had breached humanitarian law. "It is horrific. I did not know it was block after block of houses," he told reporters.

Egeland, who has estimated that $100 million is urgently needed to tackle an unfolding humanitarian crisis in Lebanon, plans to travel to Israel on Tuesday to negotiate safe corridors by land, sea and air for international aid.

The war in Lebanon has displaced half a million people. Others are trapped by fighting, especially in border villages.

More than 1,000 Hizbullah rockets have killed 17 Israeli civilians, prompting between a third to a half of all residents in northern Israel to escape the bombardment, officials said.

Twenty Israeli soldiers have also been killed in the conflict, launched when Hizbullah guerrillas seized two soldiers and killed eight in a cross-border raid on July 12.

Israel's Army Radio said more troops were expected to move into southern Lebanon on Sunday to widen the army's ground operations against Hizbullah close to the frontier.

But the army said military chief Lieutenant-General Dan Halutz has yet to decide to launch a major ground invasion.

Israel has called up thousands of reserve soldiers and has assembled troops and tanks on its northern border for days, heightening speculation a land invasion is imminent to halt rocket attacks and drive Hizbullah away from the border.

Peretz said Israel would back the deployment of a temporary international peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon, an idea earlier described as premature by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

"Due to the weakness of the Lebanese army, we support the deployment in the south of a multi-national force with broad authority," Peretz told German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

Peretz gave no time-frame for deploying the force, but suggested it would be led by NATO. Israel views the existing UN peacekeeping force in south Lebanon as a failure.

Cyprus prepared to take in nearly 10,000 more foreigners evacuated from Lebanon. About 14 crowded vessels were expected at the Cypriot ports of Larnaca and Limassol over the next day or so, part of an evacuation involving dozens of countries.

 

[Neo]

BEIRUT, Lebanon - The U.N.'s top humanitarian official on Sunday denounced the Israeli airstrikes that have devastated Beirut and southern Lebanon, saying civilians were paying a "disproportionate price" in the attacks targeting Hezbollah strongholds.

Jan Egeland inspected the destruction in south Beirut — a predominantly Shiite area that has suffered the brunt of the bombings. Israeli strikes hit the neighborhood hours before Egeland's arrival and six more missiles pounded it later, the first daytime attack there in days.

"It's terrible. I see a lot of children wounded, homeless, suffering. This is a war where civilians pay a disproportionate price in Lebanon and northern Israel.
I hadn't believed it would be block by block leveled to the ground," he said. "A disproportionate response by Israel is a violation of international humanitarian law."

Egeland appealed for safe passage for aid and said the UN would begin a relief operation in the next few days. But he cautioned the fleet of trucks and ships that will bring in supplies need free access and security, which are lacking so far.

Egeland said the United Nations will release an international appeal for aid for Lebanon on Monday. "It will be a large appeal. It's got to be more than $100 million," he said, adding that the long-term figure needed to rebuild devastated infrastructure would be "in the billions."

"Not only the West, the Arab countries, the Asian countries, must come to the relief of the Lebanese in their hour of greatest need, they can only rely on us now," he told The Associated Press.

The humanitarian chief made his way around the piles of debris left by the bombardment in Haret Hreik, which houses Hezbollah headquarters and has been hit several times since the fighting began July 12. At one point, he looked down to see he was stepping on a school textbook buried in the rubble.

He stressed the need for an end to hostilities, telling reporters, "If it continues like this, there will be more and more civilian casualties."

A humanitarian crisis is brewing in the south and other parts of Lebanon.

The WHO said the 600,000 people have been displaced by the hostilities. Lebanese Finance Minister Jihad Azour told Al-Arabiya television put the figure of people who have fled their homes at 750,000, nearly 20 percent of Lebanon's 4 million people.

Egeland, who met with the prime minister and other leaders to talk about aid, planned to travel Monday to Israel to coordinate the of opening aid corridors.

"I will ask for mercy for the civilian population," he said.
Israel has eased its blockade on Beirut's port to allow humanitarian supplies to pass through, but there appeared to be no letup in Israeli attacks on roads leading out of Beirut and along the route to Syria.

The need for relief was greatest in south Lebanon, where bombed out roads and continuous airstrikes have isolated communities.
Egeland said the U.N. was setting up the relief operation but stressed that access and security were critical for the effort to work.

"The rockets going into Israel have to stop and the enormous bombardment that we see here with one block after the other being leveled has to stop," he said. There is no military solution. It is only a political solution."

 

[Owais]

Israel, Hezbollah continue to exchange attacks BEIRUT: Israel and Hezbollah continued to exchange attacks at Lebanese border on Sunday killing two Israelis, three Hezbollah fighters and the Lebanese civilians, the reports said.

Six Hezbollah rockets fell on Haifa Sunday, about 25 miles from the Lebanese border, killing two people and wounding at least six others in separate attacks, while Israeli forces continued their intensive artillery fire and air strikes on Lebanon.

In the attack on Haifa, one person was killed when a rocket struck a highway on a hillside overlooking downtown Haifa, riddling the victim's white sedan. It appeared that the victim was the driver.

Two others in the car were wounded; the car crashed into another, injuring a person in that vehicle. The other person killed in the Hezbollah rocket attacks Sunday was in a building.

Violence escalates as Israel responds to militant attacks from Gaza, Lebanon.

Israeli warplanes hit a minibus on its way to Tyre, killing three and wounding 13, Lebanese security forces said. It was carrying 16 Lebanese fleeing border village of Tairi. Israel also struck the Lebanese port city of Sidon, destroying a religious complex.

Four people were reported injured. Sidon has been a point of refuge for many fleeing the violence along the border.

At least eight civilians, including a Lebanese press photographer, were killed Sunday in air strikes across southern and eastern Lebanon, the reports said.

The Shiite militant group said three of its fighters had also been killed.

Around 360 people have been killed in Israel's massive blitz against Lebanon, which was launched after the capture of two soldiers by Hezbollah guerrillas in a deadly border attack on July 12.

A total of 37 Israelis have died.

 

[Owais]

US supports Israeli assault on Lebanon; 10,000 Americans evacuated WASHINGTON: The United States has once again supported Israel's invasion of Lebanese territory, terming it the Jewish state's right to defend its territory and citizens.

While some 10,000 Americans have so far been evacuated from Lebanon, a French news agency reported White House spokesman as saying.

Meanwhile, Israel's top command General Beni Gantz said Israeli air and ground forces "have more
or less completed taking over the village of Marun Al-Ras," close to the Israeli border and strategically located 911 meters (3,000 feet) above sea level.

Gantz said Hezbollah forces sustained "many casualties after fierce fighting that lasted a long time."

But Lebanese security forces said that Israeli and Hezbollah forces were engaged in street battles in the village, where four Israeli soldiers and several Hezbollah militiamen were killed in battles in recent days.

 

[Owais]

Resolution of Lebanon crisis to take a long time: Olmert JERUSALEM: Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told a cabinet meeting that the current Lebanon crisis would last a long time.

"The diplomatic process will not come at the expense of destroying terror infrastructure, and this process will take a very long time," a senior government source quoted Olmert as saying on condition of anonymity.

"The ground operation is focusing on a limited entry of forces," he told the cabinet. "We are not dealing with an invasion of Lebanon."

Olmert said Israel would be ready to negotiate an end to the conflict with the Lebanese government, but did not elaborate on when that would happen.

"Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora is a partner for negotiations when the time is right for that," he said.

Israel launched a massive offensive in Lebanon on July 12 after Hezbollah launched a cross-border raid, seized two Israeli servicemen and killed another eight.

The Jewish state has said that it aims to rout the militant Shiite group from southern Lebanon.

The blitz has killed more than 350 people in Lebanon, most of them civilians, and displaced more than half a million, sparking fears of a humanitarian catastrophe.

"Israel will continue to defend its cities," Olmert told reporters later in the day, after the latest Hezbollah rocket attack killed two people in the northern port of Haifa.

"We will try our utmost to avoid targeting innocent civilians."

"We are using our right to self-defense in the face of a murderous organization that has fired... rockets in order to harm our civilians. We will use all our force in our fight," he said.

 

[Owais]

Israel "pushed button of its own destruction": Iran TEHRAN: Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, declared Sunday that Israel had "pushed the button of its own destruction" by launching its military campaign against the Iranian-backed Hizbullah militia in Lebanon.

Ahmadinejad didn't elaborate, but suggested Islamic nations and others could somehow isolate Israel and its main backers led by the United States. On Saturday, the chairman of Iran's armed forced joint chiefs, Maj.-Gen. Sayyed Hassan Firuzabadi, said Iran would never join the current Middle East fighting.

Ahmadinejad's latest salvo against Israel came as the 12-day-old hostilities in Lebanon continued. The hard-line president drew international condemnation last year after publicly calling for Israel to be wiped out and calling the Holocaust a "myth."

Iran helped create the anti-Israel Hizbullah movement in the early 1980s and is among its main supplier of arms and funds. But Teheran has denied Israeli claims it is sent Hizbullah long-range missiles that have reached Haifa and other points in northern Israel since the battles broke out nearly two weeks ago following a cross-border Hizbullah raid that captured two Israeli soldiers.

"Britain and the United States are accomplices of the Zionist regime in its crimes in Lebanon and Palestine," said Ahmadinejad.

He said "the people of the region will respond" unless Israel and its allies apologize for their policies.

"Arrogant powers have set up a base for themselves to threaten and plunder nations in the region," said Ahmadinejad. "But today, the occupier regime (Israel) - whose philosophy is based on threats, massacre and invasion - has reached its finishing line."


Last week, Ahmadinejad sent a letter to German Chancellor Angela Merkel that contained statements about Israel and the Holocaust that are "not acceptable," said German officials.

Germany has sharply criticized Ahmadinejad's anti-Israel statements.

In Teheran, the government has sanctioned billboards showing Hizbullah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah and a message that it is the duty of Muslims to "wipe out" Israel. Officials also organized a demonstration in the southern city of Shiraz by Iran's small Jewish community calling for Israel's destruction and praising Hizbullah.

 

[Owais]

Israeli spy in Beirut arrested BEIRUT: Lebanese intelligence agency has claimed to arrest an Israeli secret service member, Lebanon's prestigious newspaper Al-Safeer reported here on Sunday.

According to the newspaper, the arrested spy told Lebanon's secret agencies about the network of important Israeli cells within Beirut and south of Lebanon.

Sensitive tools and equipments were also recovered from the Israeli, who admitted to have marked several buildings in Beirut to help Israeli air strikers target them on point, it added.

The arrested spy was a key member of large-scale Israeli intelligence network in Beirut, it concluded.

 

[Owais]

Israeli invasion will not protect it against rocket attacks: Nasrallah BEIRUT: Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah said Monday that an Israeli ground invasion would not prevent Hezbollah from firing rockets into northern Israel.

``Any Israeli incursion will have no political results if it does not achieve its declared goals, primarily an end to the rocketing of Zionist settlements in northern occupied Palestine,'' Nasrallah told a Lebanese newspaper. ``I assure you that this goal will not be achieved, God willing, by an Israeli incursion,'' he said.

His remarks came after Hezbollah fired dozens of rockets at Israel on Sunday.

Responding to reports about diplomatic efforts to end the fighting, Nasrallah said the priority was to end Israeli attacks on Lebanon, but added he was open to discussing initiatives.

 

[Owais]

Israel agrees EU forces deployment in southern Lebanon TEL AVIV+WASHINGTON: Israel has agreed on the deployment of European Union force in southern Lebanon.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said that his government would accept a peacekeeping force in Lebanon "made up of troops from European Union countries".

"Israel is ready to see deployment of a force with military capabilities and combat experience made up of troops from European Union countries once its mandate has been fixed," Olmert said during talks with visiting German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter
Steinmeier.

The mandate "will have to include control of the border crossings between Syria and Lebanon, deployment in south Lebanon and support for the Lebanese army," the Israeli premier said.

Meanwhile, top Saudi Arabian officials pressed President George W. Bush to agree to seek a cease-fire in the conflict between Israel and Hizbollah guerrillas in southern Lebanon.

"We requested a cease-fire to allow for the cessation of hostilities, to allow for the rebuilding of the forces of Lebanon," Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal told reporters after a meeting of more than an hour with Bush and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice

 

[Owais]

Pak-Iran consensus on ceasefire in ME ISLAMABAD: Iran’s Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki on Monday called in his counterpart Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri and discussed the latest developments in Lebanon.

The two foreign ministers expressed deep regret on the loss of invaluable lives and devastation of infrastructure.

Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri emphasised on proactive role of the world community and Organisation for Islamic Countries (OIC) in putting an end to the Israel's aggression in the region.

In view of rigorous situation in Middle East, both the foreign ministers agreed upon a point that the OIC countries included in ASEAN should meet on the sidelines of the ASEAN regional forum meeting on July 27 to 29 in Malaysia.

The Iranian foreign minister told that he had invited his Malaysian counterpart Syed Hamid Albar to the proposed meeting.

Khurshid Kasuri told Mottaki about the decision made in the high-level meeting under the joint chairmanship of President General Musharraf and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz that Pakistan would try all possible diplomatic efforts for ceasefire and relief goods would be dispatched to Lebanese people.