Fighting Centers on Strategic Lebanese Towns

Israeli infantry and air forces battled Hezbollah guerrillas Thursday for control of three key southern Lebanese towns that could serve as the platform for a broader invasion.

In Beirut, Israeli aircraft damaged a historic lighthouse that rises from the Lebanese American University and dropped leaflets warning of a “painful and strong” response to Hezbollah attacks.

Overnight, Israeli warplanes launched more than 100 airstrikes targeting Hezbollah positions, the Israeli army said. Reports from Lebanon early today told of explosions across southern Beirut and a bombardment that killed seven in the north near Tripoli.

An Israeli Arab woman and her 5-year-old son were killed in their kitchen in the Galilee village of Deir al Assad when it was hit by a Hezbollah rocket, one of 166 that Israel said were fired Thursday.

Israeli officials said they would delay acting on a Cabinet decision to expand the ground offensive in Lebanon to give diplomatic efforts additional time.

At the United Nations, Russia circulated a draft resolution calling for a 72-hour humanitarian cease-fire, saying the crisis was too pressing to wait for the Security Council to reach agreement on a stalled U.S.-French cease-fire resolution. A vote is scheduled for today.

“Perhaps when the guns are silent it will be easier to find the right words,” Vitaly Churkin, Russia’s ambassador to the U.N., said after the council’s five permanent members failed to agree on whether combined Lebanese, U.N. and international troops would be authorized to use force to disarm Hezbollah fighters.

Lebanon considers foreign troops with such power to be an infringement of its sovereignty.

U.S. Ambassador John R. Bolton was guardedly optimistic that the council could agree on a resolution today. “I think we’ve got a realistic prospect for success, but I can’t say for certain because there are things that are undecided,” he said.

Reports from southern Lebanon said the Israeli army by nightfall had taken control of the Christian town of Marjayoun, strategically significant high ground, and continued to fight for Khiam.

Controlling the area would give Israel an important base for any push farther north. Israel has massed hundreds of tanks and armored vehicles along the border and has sent large numbers of troops several miles into Lebanon.

Throughout much of the day, Israeli artillery and missile-firing helicopters attacked a triangle of territory between Marjayoun, Khiam and Kliya. From the highest hill in Metulla, the slow-moving battle could be seen unfolding.

Israeli artillery fired on several two- and three-story buildings along a ridge south of Marjayoun, setting the structures and surrounding fields ablaze. Explosions were periodically punctuated by heavy machine-gun fire. Smoke filled the valley that stretches southward to the border.

Israeli troops reportedly stormed Marjayoun, which had served as headquarters for Israel during its 18-year occupation of southern Lebanon, and seized control of an army barracks that housed 400 members of the Joint Security Forces, composed of Lebanon’s Internal Security Forces and army intelligence.

The barracks chief, along with other soldiers and civilian prisoners at the base, were reportedly taken into custody.

Israeli forces wanted to take control of just one of the four buildings at the barracks, Lebanese Interior Minister Ahmed Fatfat told Lebanon’s New TV. But when Lebanese troops in the other buildings tried to leave, Israeli soldiers stopped them, Fatfat said.

Israel said two soldiers were killed and 19 wounded, nine seriously, in Thursday’s fighting. On Wednesday, the offensive claimed the lives of 15 Israeli reservists. Hezbollah claimed Thursday that it had crippled more than a dozen Israeli tanks.

The attack in Beirut that damaged the lighthouse -- an apparent attempt to knock out a television broadcast antenna -- was the first Israeli bombardment in the central part of the capital.

In the southern outskirts, panic seized the neighborhoods of Hay al Sellom, Bourj al Barajneh and Shiyah after Israeli planes dropped leaflets ordering residents to evacuate immediately. Residents had largely remained in their homes and had been sheltering evacuees from other parts of Lebanon.

As drones buzzed overhead, families clamored for seats on buses taking residents deeper into Beirut’s already packed districts. In Shiyah, nervous families clutching luggage, bags and children waited while police frantically called for more buses to take them to Tripoli.

Fliers in northern Lebanon warned that any truck moving on roads after 8 p.m. would be targeted. The northern roads have been the last reliable corridor to the Syrian border. Israel suspects the routes are used to resupply Hezbollah fighters.

Israeli Brig. Gen. Ido Nehushtan, speaking in a briefing near Metulla, acknowledged the difficulties that Israel faced in its fight against Hezbollah. He said Hezbollah fighters were better equipped than many national armies, with antitank missiles and other sophisticated weaponry. In the six years since Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon, he said, Hezbollah has converted the zone into a “fortress.”

To underscore the point, the Israeli army displayed photographs of what it said was material confiscated from the home of a 60-year-old Lebanese father of four Hezbollah fighters. The army said it found a night-vision video camera connected to a computer used to pinpoint and aim rocket fire at Israeli targets.

Israel is operating in difficult terrain -- forested hills virtually impassible for tanks but familiar territory for Hezbollah fighters. And the reservists who make up the backbone of Israel’s military have proved in some cases to be out of shape and in need of training, analysts say.

Asked whether Israel can win, Nehushtan said victory might have to be redefined, given that the enemy is a motivated and well-armed army backed by Iran and Syria.

“If you are waiting for the white flag of Hezbollah, I’m telling you there won’t be one,” he said. “This is not a war of days or even weeks. It may be a matter of months.”

The day after Israel suffered its heaviest military losses, criticism was growing over the management of the war. Israelis have generally been supportive of the decision to fight Hezbollah after the Islamic militant group captured two Israeli soldiers and killed eight others in a cross-border attack July 12.

But questions have mounted over whether the decision to launch a ground campaign came too late. And the military’s inability to stop the daily barrage of Hezbollah rocket fire on northern Israel has eroded public confidence.

Nahum Barnea, Israel’s most influential columnist, wrote in a front-page piece in the country’s largest-circulation newspaper that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert should pull out of Lebanon as soon as possible.

“In a casino, it is hard for a winner to know when to stop. It is even harder for a loser. Lebanon is more treacherous than a gambling hall: It punishes winners and losers alike,” Barnea wrote. “There is no sense in investing in a lost cause. Adding more ground forces to those already stuck in Lebanon will not bring about the hoped-for turnabout in the Lebanese gamble.”

In Jerusalem, Israeli government officials signaled that they would allow a small window before going forward with a wider ground offensive, approved by the government Wednesday.

“There is a certain diplomatic process underway -- we can allow a little more time to see if there’s a possibility for that process,” said Cabinet minister Isaac Herzog.

Defense Minister Amir Peretz said that if diplomacy failed, Israel would move forward with an “unequivocal military resolution.”

“We intend to free the residents of northern Israel from bomb shelters,” Peretz said during a visit to troops at the front. His comments were interrupted by an air-raid warning, one of dozens that sound every day. Bodyguards hustled him into the nearest shelter.

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Wilkinson reported from Metulla and Stack from Beirut. Times staff writer Maggie Farley at the United Nations and special correspondent Maha al-Azar in Beirut contributed to this report.