Israel Hits Syrian Post in Beirut as Crisis Spirals

The crisis in Lebanon escalated Friday with Israeli helicopter gunships for the first time striking a Syrian military outpost in Beirut, killing one soldier. Civilians fled by the tens of thousands as Israel rained down more rockets and bombs across southern Lebanon in its drive to avenge cross-border rocket attacks by Hezbollah guerrillas.

At least 11 people were killed and more than 40 were wounded in the second day of intense assaults, Lebanese police and hospital officials said.

But the attacks did not succeed in deterring Hezbollah. Israel endured at least seven new rocket barrages on its northern communities by the militant Shiite Muslim group, which has vowed to oust Israel from its self-declared, 9-mile-wide “security zone” in southern Lebanon.

With Israel and Hezbollah blaming each other for the worst fighting in nearly three years, and vowing more reprisals, there appeared little chance for an early resolution of a conflict that seemed to be spinning out of control. The impact of the fighting on the overall movement toward an Arab-Israeli peace was uncertain, but in the words of one Western diplomat here, “it can’t help.”

As the crisis grew, Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri said he will go to the Syrian capital of Damascus today for urgent consultations with Syrian President Hafez Assad, the chief sponsor of his government.

Hezbollah, whose popularity has been growing among the Lebanese because of its defiant stance toward Israel, shrugged off the initial attack Thursday, claiming that Israel had succeeded only in killing a 60-year-old civilian. But Israeli forces were back in action in Beirut again Friday.

Israeli attack helicopters swooped in low over the suspected Hezbollah headquarters complex in a tightly controlled enclave in the slums of southern Beirut, their rockets sending up billowing clouds of black smoke as they struck.

After nightfall Friday, as a thunderstorm rolled over Beirut, Israeli television reported yet another attack against the Hezbollah-controlled section of the city. Dull thuds echoed over a capital still scarred and barely recovered from the trauma of 15 years of a vicious civil war.

Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres said his government will not hesitate to attack Beirut again if the rocketing of Israel from Lebanon is not stopped. Israel underlined its determination to stop Hezbollah on Thursday when it used laser-guided missiles to strike what it called the organization’s command center in Beirut, the first time the Lebanese capital had come under Israeli air attack in 14 years.

Hezbollah guerrillas “will not be able to hide anywhere in Lebanon,” Israeli government spokesman Uri Dromi declared in Jerusalem. “We are going to get them day or night, even if they hide--as usual, cowardly--in the middle of populated areas.”

Flak-jacketed Hezbollah gunmen, stationed on nearly every corner in the southern Beirut neighborhood, fired back at the Israeli attackers Friday with automatic rifles. Lebanese army and Syrian antiaircraft guns, dug in throughout the city and ringing the seaside Beirut International Airport, also returned fire. But it had no noticeable impact on the Israeli assault.

During the air raids, witnesses said, six Israeli missiles hit a camouflaged Syrian army position near the airport, injuring at least 12 Syrian soldiers dug in around a garbage dump. The state-run Syrian news agency in Damascus later confirmed that one Syrian was killed and seven wounded. It was the first time Israel and Syria have come into direct conflict since the recent escalation of tensions.

Israeli officials said they are not concerned that Syria--the dominant force in Lebanon, with an estimated 40,000 troops here--will be drawn into their fight with Hezbollah.

“We did not know at the time that these were Syrian soldiers, but when we are under attack, we will not pause to inquire as to the identity of who is firing,” said Israeli army intelligence chief Maj. Gen. Moshe Yaalon.

In the wake of its attacks inside Lebanon on Thursday, Israel was braced for a response from Hezbollah, and it was not long in coming.

Fighters armed with Katyushas, crude but highly mobile rockets, fired into Israel beginning Friday morning--most seriously at Kiryat Shemona, a town of 23,000 people that has borne the brunt of the guerrilla attacks in recent months, including a rocket barrage Tuesday that wounded 36 people. Four Israelis were injured, including a woman severely wounded when the car she was driving took a direct hit. Hezbollah said this was just the beginning.

About half of the residents of Kiryat Shemona have fled the area. The rest are underground, but in an angry mood.

“We want a war. We want a war,” one young man told Peres when he paid a surprise visit Friday. Peres told the townspeople, “We will do everything in our power to ease the distress of the residents, especially that of the children, who are in bomb shelters at the moment.”

Meanwhile, residents of southern Lebanon packed themselves into cars, trucks, buses and any other vehicles they could find to escape the Israeli warplanes. The fleeing masses choked roads out of southern Lebanon, their cars packed with children and piled high with mattresses, clothing and other meager belongings. Some brought along a few goats or cows, crammed into small tractor-pulled carts.

The exodus created a four-lane, bumper-to-bumper traffic jam in the region of Sidon as people streamed northward to avoid Israeli reprisals that had been announced to begin at 2:30 p.m. sharp. By that hour, most of southern Lebanon was already a ghost town. But the radio then proclaimed a two-hour extension of the deadline.

Then, precisely at 4:30 p.m., the fireworks began. Israeli jets crisscrossed the skies, and artillery batteries opened up with dull thuds echoing over the southern Lebanese hills. Puffs of smoke marked the spots where the shells landed, and before long ambulances tore across the deserted streets to collect victims.

Israeli warships appeared on the horizon off the Lebanese coast, clearly within sight of Beirut’s recently rebuilt luxury hotels.

In Nabatiyeh, a market town within sight of the Israeli-occupied security zone, Israeli warplanes dropped three bombs on the same position, an abandoned army barracks that residents watching from the nearby Najda Hospital conceded was used regularly by Hezbollah guerrillas to launch missile strikes into Israel.

Bright orange flames flashed, and as the force of one bomb’s concussion rattled his office windows, 25-year-old hospital administrator Basam Yasin said with a nervous laugh: “As Beavis and Butt-head say, ‘That was cool.’ ”

Other residents did not hide their anger.

“We are bombed. We are suffering being displaced. And as you see, we are on the streets--we don’t have any shelter,” complained one woman parked along the road leading north to Beirut. “We wonder when we will come back-- and if when we come back we will find our homes destroyed.”

The attacks recalled Israel’s 1993 “Operation Accountability,” in which it used an intensive bombing campaign in southern Lebanon to achieve a U.S.-brokered understanding with Hezbollah and Syria that Israeli civilian targets would no longer be attacked from Lebanon. That offensive drove an estimated 500,000 villagers from their homes and killed about 130 people, mostly civilians.

Israeli Foreign Minister Ehud Barak said Israel regrets the pain inflicted on Lebanese civilians but said the solution lies with the Lebanese government. He called on it to “disarm the Hezbollah of their weapons or find another way to silence them.” No talks with Hariri were planned, Barak said. “There is nothing to talk about.”

The Israeli attacks, however, appeared only to increase support for Hezbollah. “Israel is the cause, and Hezbollah is the response,” said Mariam Nooradin, whose family fled their village directly opposite the Israeli lines. “It is Hezbollah’s duty to fight, because Israel is occupying our land.”

Daniszewski reported from Beirut and Miller from Jerusalem.

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Lebanon Under Fire

Israeli forces struck southern Beirut and towns across Lebanon for a second day, driving tens of thousands of Lebanese from the area. The raids are in reprisal for attacks by Hezbollah guerrillas on northern Israel.