Israelis Storm Village in Lebanon, Killing 32 : Lebanese Army Fights Back, Then Flees; Raid Follows Suicide Truck Bombing of Israel Convoy

Israeli forces in armored vehicles stormed this hilltop Shia Muslim village early Monday, killing at least 32 people by Israeli army count, in what may have been retaliation for a suicide truck-bomb attack on an Israeli troop convoy the day before.

“The Revenge of the Israel Defense Forces,” said a spray-painted sign, apparently left by the Israelis, in the main square of the town. The symbol of Amal, the Shia Muslim militia that has been responsible for a number of attacks against the Israelis, was crossed out with black paint.

‘Iron Fist Policy’

The dawn assault on this village, two miles north of the Israeli occupation zone, was the most lethal expression so far of Israel’s “iron fist policy” in southern Lebanon.

The raid was preceded by a barrage of cannon fire at 11 p.m. Sunday. The Lebanese army, which maintains a garrison in the town, fought back for two hours but then fled.

Twenty Lebanese soldiers were taken prisoner after they failed to heed a warning not to interfere and returned Israeli fire, according to a spokesman for the Israeli military. One Lebanese soldier was killed and one wounded.

Sunday’s suicide bombing, which killed 12 Israeli soldiers and injured 14 others, occurred in Metulla, about 15 miles east of here.

The Israeli military spokesman said the Zrariye raid was not a retaliation for the bombing but was a “pre-planned operation” based on intelligence. The spokesman called Zrariye “a hornets’ nest” and a principal headquarters of Hezbollah (Party of God), a radical Shia Muslim group supported by Iran.

Israel’s chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Moshe Levy, said on Israel television that the raid on Zrariye was “absolutely not” connected to the truck bombing the day before. However, Israeli Finance Minister Yitzhak Modai, speaking in New York, called the assault a “strong warning.”

A police official said the Israelis rounded up between 100 and 150 young men from the town. They brought more than 40 armored personnel carriers into the village, in addition to heavy tanks and infantry, he said.

The Israelis blew up at least 10 houses, destroyed the police station with a bomb and flattened private cars by driving tanks into them.

Residents scoffed at Lebanese government reports that the Lebanese army engaged the Israelis in hand-to-hand combat.

Bodies on the Road

Reporters who entered the town as the Israelis pulled out found six bodies on the road. Four of the six were elderly and apparently had been riding in three civilian cars hit by machine-gun and tank fire. Around them were scattered bags of lemons.

A charred body lay in a car that had been hit by a rocket-propelled grenade, the Associated Press reported. The track of an armored personnel carrier could be seen on the rooftop of a crushed automobile; in the back seat was the crushed body of a man, AP said.

‘God Is Great!’

Sobbing rescue workers screamed, “Allahu Akbar!” (God is great) as they pulled bodies from the wreckage of cars.

“We were beaten up. They took our guns and papers and humiliated us with words,” said one Lebanese soldier. “How can a gun face a tank and a brigade?”

The town was virtually stripped of its men after the raid. Hundreds of women wearing the gray scarfs of Shia Muslims stood in the central square, crying and cursing the Israelis.

Israel’s “iron fist policy,” aimed at reducing guerrilla attacks on Israeli forces during their three-stage withdrawal from southern Lebanon, went into effect last month. The first phase of the withdrawal, a pullback from the area around the seaport of Sidon, was completed on Feb. 16.

On Sunday, a man in a small truck loaded with explosives drove into a convoy of Israeli soldiers, half a mile north of the Israeli border town of Metulla, and detonated the bomb.

Claims of Responsibility

Beirut newspapers reported Monday that responsibility for the truck bombing was claimed by three groups: the Lebanese National Resistance Front, an umbrella guerrilla movement in southern Lebanon believed to include Amal; the Islamic Resistance Movement, which has been linked by the Lebanese media to Hezbollah, and Islamic Jihad (Islamic Holy War), which claimed responsibility for twice blowing up U.S. Embassy structures in Beirut and for the devastating attack on the U.S. Marine barracks in the Lebanese capital in October, 1983.

Sunday’s suicide bombing was believed to have been in retaliation for a car bomb that exploded in a crowded Shia suburb of Beirut on Friday, killing 80 people, and the earlier bombing of a mosque in southern Lebanon that killed 12 people, including two senior Amal officials.

Fundamentalist Muslim groups have blamed both bombings on Israel, but the Israelis have denied the charges.

Nabih Berri, the leader of Amal and the Lebanese Cabinet minister for southern Lebanon, on Monday praised the truck bombing of the previous day and said it undermined Israel’s hopes of creating a security zone along its northern border.

He said the raid on Zrariye was an Israeli “reprisal” for the car bombing.

“But we shall not be terrorized by the Israeli tactics,” Berri said. “We shall sharpen our faith in our irrevocable right to acquire an unconditional Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon’s entire soil.”

Times staff writer Dan Fisher in Jerusalem contributed to this story.