Israel Vows to Widen War on Hezbollah

On one of the deadliest days of nearly a month of warfare, Israeli bombardment killed at least 61 people Monday in strikes on a busy south Beirut neighborhood, the eastern Bekaa Valley and southern Lebanon.

With diplomatic overtures for a cease-fire stalled, Israel vowed to expand its offensive. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said he would place “no limits” on the army in its efforts to move Hezbollah fighters in south Lebanon out of firing range on Israel.

In south Lebanon, at least three Israeli soldiers from a tank crew were killed and seven injured during pitched battles with Hezbollah guerrillas, who again rocketed northern Israel with devastating effect. Israel attacked 80 purported Hezbollah targets overnight, including what the military said were roads leading to rocket-launching positions.

The day’s heaviest toll was exacted when Israeli warplanes flattened a crowded, six-story apartment building in the southern Beirut neighborhood of Shiyah. By midnight, at least 20 people had been found dead, Lebanese television reported.

The late Monday attack came as Israeli military figures acknowledged that they have been unable to stop Hezbollah guerrillas and demanded a freer hand to move deeper into Lebanon.

Disagreement also mounted over a U.S.-backed United Nations draft resolution aimed at ending the bloodshed, which has claimed the lives of nearly 800 Lebanese and nearly 100 Israelis. Arab states said the proposed resolution gave unfair advantage to Israel, which is not required to withdraw or cease “defensive” operations.

Lebanon’s weak and beleaguered government on Monday said it would deploy a 15,000-strong army south of the Litani River if Israel withdrew from Lebanon, an important signal from Beirut that it will attempt to exert control over territory long ago ceded to Hezbollah. The government ordered army reservists called up in anticipation of the deployment.

Israel’s attack on the Shiyah neighborhood was especially terrifying because it was an area considered safe; refugees from bombings elsewhere had taken shelter in the neighborhood, which is not part of the Hezbollah-dominated suburban band that rings Beirut’s southern edge.

“Now it’s possible to bomb anywhere,” said Hassan Tarraf, a 25-year-old chef who lives near the targeted building. “We were considering this a safe area.”

Blast victim Zeineb Chaito, 40, lay in a Beirut hospital bed Monday night, her face badly bruised, her leg so violently broken that the bone had burst through the skin.

“I was listening to the news and I felt myself fall down and I lost consciousness,” she said. “I was talking to somebody in my family and then the bomb hit.”

Sprawled on a hospital cot, Chaito was calling for her sisters, who had been with her just before the blast. A distant family member explained gently that many people still lay trapped under the rubble. Chaito pressed, asking for her sisters. “Really, I don’t know,” he said slowly. But it wasn’t true. The two women had been crushed by the debris, he told visitors quietly; their chances for survival were slim.

The Israeli military declined to say why the neighborhood was targeted.

Details remained sketchy about airstrikes in the Lebanese border village of Houla, where Israel bombed a set of farmhouses where residents said at least 150 people had taken shelter. Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora initially said the blasts killed 40 people, but later revised the death toll to one.

Elsewhere in southern Lebanon and in the Bekaa Valley, an additional 40 people were reported killed in air raids.

At the United Nations, an investigation of the July 30 bombing of the Lebanese village of Qana concluded that Israel’s attack might be part of a “pattern of violations of international law.” The bombing killed 28 civilians, including at least 14 children.

The investigators said they could not confirm or disprove Israel’s claim that Hezbollah was launching missiles from the area, but noted that all the victims were civilians and that no weapons were found in or around the bombed building.

The report, released Monday night, emphasized that Israel’s evacuation warnings did not release it from its obligation under international law to avoid harming civilians. Many of the villagers were unable to leave, the report said.

Olmert, touring military command headquarters in Israel’s besieged north, said he would give the army free rein to press its offensive, if rocket fire continued.

“We have to stop the rockets,” Olmert told reserve officers. “We cannot have a million residents living in shelters. On this matter, there will be no limitations on the army.... Israel cannot allow itself to let others think that ... we will not punch them back in full force.”

Defense Minister Amir Peretz, who accompanied Olmert, said later that he had ordered the army to broaden its attacks on Hezbollah rocketlaunching sites “wherever they are” if diplomacy remained stalled.

“We are at one of the most decisive stages of this war,” Peretz told the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee of the Israeli Knesset, or parliament.

But criticism was growing among many Israelis as authorities acknowledged that Hezbollah still possessed thousands of short-range rockets, hundreds of longer-range weapons and 10,000 launchers, despite nearly a month of ferocious air, land and sea attacks.

“At this point, we are in a war. We are bleeding,” said Maj. Gen. Doron Almog, retired head of the army’s doctrine and training branch. He said failing to deploy a larger ground force earlier and deeper was a critical mistake, for which Israel was now paying.

Maj. Gen. Yoram Yair, a retired commander and former military attache to Washington, said Israel would have to move deeper into Lebanon to neutralize the “tens of thousands” of short-range Hezbollah rockets.

“In order to prevent their launching, you have to be out in the field,” Yair said. “That means 15 or 20 kilometers [nine to 12 miles] inside Lebanon.”

The Israeli air force, meanwhile, said it shot down an unmanned Hezbollah drone that was flying toward Israel’s densely populated western coast.

Of 140 rockets fired at northern Israel on Monday, more than 50 slammed into Kiryat Shemona alone, torching the surrounding hillsides and spewing shrapnel through residential neighborhoods that are all but deserted. One rocket speared the roof of a two-story apartment building and landed on the first floor. Three people were wounded.

“Explosions all morning, and in the afternoon the same. Everyday the same,” said Simeon Flatskis, a Ukrainian-born Israeli who is one of the few people in the northern Israeli city who has not fled and keeps his business open despite the onslaught. He sells liquor, he said, and sales are up.

Israeli police say nearly 2,900 rockets have plowed into northern Israel since the current conflict began.

Israeli soldiers returning from combat forays inside southern Lebanon describe an adversary that is more well-armed and better trained than the Palestinians they confronted in the past.

“Like you have a dog in your house, they have weapons in the houses,” said David, a combat medic from the Nahal brigade, who was not allowed to give his full name. “And it’s every family.”

Diplomatic attempts to end the bloodshed continued to sputter.

In Beirut, Prime Minister Siniora broke down in tears as he made a desperate appeal to a special meeting of the Arab League.

“You see your countrymen being killed and they are innocent people,” Siniora said later. “Put yourself in my shoes. They are being bombarded with no mercy.” The Arab representatives agreed to go to the U.N. to seek changes in the draft resolution aimed at ending the conflict.

In New York, the U.N. Security Council said it would hear the Arab League foreign ministers as it discussed Lebanese demands to amend the draft resolution. The council will delay a vote on the resolution until Wednesday at the earliest, and probably Thursday, to allow time to consider the ministers’ case.

Lebanon says the resolution must require Israel to halt all attacks and withdraw from Lebanese territory immediately.

President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice conceded that disagreements persisted among negotiators over the details of the U.N. resolution.

“Whatever happens in the U.N., we must not create a vacuum into which Hezbollah and its sponsors are able to move more weapons,” Bush said in Crawford, Texas.

“Sometimes the world likes to take the easy route in order to solve a problem. Our view is, it’s time to address root causes of problems.”

Stack reported from Beirut and Wilkinson from Kiryat Shemona. Times staff writers Walter Hamilton and Maggie Farley at the United Nations and Peter Wallsten in Crawford and special correspondent Maha al-Azar in Beirut contributed to this report.

*

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Airstrikes, rocket attacks

Lebanon

Israeli planes flatten a six-story apartment building, killing at least 20 people in Shiyah, a southern Beirut neighborhood.

The Lebanese government announces that it will send a 15,000-member force across the Litani River when Israeli troops withdraw. It orders army reservists to be called in anticipation of the deployment.

Israel bombs farmhouses where scores had taken shelter in the border village of Houla. One person is confirmed dead.

About 40 people reportedly die in other air raids in southern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley.

Lebanon asks that the contested, Israeli-occupied Shabaa Farms area be turned over to U.N. jurisdiction and proposes a mutual prisoner release involving two Israeli soldiers whose July 12 abduction set off the nearly four-week-old conflict.

Israel

More than 50 rockets hit Kiryat Shemona.

Israel shoots down an unmanned drone headed toward the country’s densely populated Mediterranean coast.