Israel Dispatches Lebanon Border Reinforcements

Israel sent reinforcements to the Lebanese border Friday in the wake of its raid on a Hezbollah training camp. Leaders of the Shiite Muslim group vowed revenge, and thousands of Lebanese fled northward to avoid further hostilities.

Hezbollah fighters rained Katyusha rockets into Israel late Thursday night in retaliation for the attack earlier in the day, but there were no casualties. Thousands of Israelis were ordered to sleep in bomb shelters, and northern Israeli resorts reported a wave of cancellations as tourists fled.

In Lebanon, shops, banks and schools were closed for a day of national mourning as the victims were buried.

Hezbollah said 26 fighters were killed when Israeli helicopter gunships and warplanes attacked the training camp in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, near the border with Syria. Others said the death toll could be as high as 45.

Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s general secretary, delivered a defiant address to more than 15,000 mourners who marched in Beirut’s suburbs. Nasrallah declared that Hezbollah will avenge the deaths with suicide bombers.