Israel Knocks Out Beirut Electricity

As diplomatic efforts intensified to end the conflict in Lebanon, Israeli jet fighters Monday carried out a fiery attack on the second power station in the capital in two days, plunging this city into darkness and reminding the demoralized populace of its suffering during the country’s 15-year civil war.

On the fifth day of the Israeli drive to avenge cross-border rocket attacks by Hezbollah guerrillas, seven people were killed and 20 were wounded in Lebanon, mainly from the relentless barrage of thousands of artillery shells and rockets in the south of the country. Thirty-three Lebanese--all civilians--have died in the Israeli campaign.

The offensive, which has caused more than 400,000 Lebanese to flee their homes, is aimed at pressuring Lebanon to eliminate once and for all the threat of rocket attacks on civilian targets in northern Israel by the militant Shiite Muslim group Hezbollah. The Israeli town of Kiryat Shemona has borne the brunt of the guerrilla attacks in recent months, including a rocket barrage last Tuesday that wounded 36 people.

Hezbollah showed its defiance by renewing its threats of suicide bombings and increasing its barrage of Katyusha rockets into Israel. Eight Israelis were reported wounded by rocket attacks Monday. Since last week, one Israeli soldier has been killed and more than 40 Israelis have been injured in cross-border firing, most before the Israeli offensive began.

Lebanon, however, clearly has been getting the worst of it. Israeli artillery, aircraft and helicopter gunships have been especially active around the southern town of Nabatiyeh--where a Hezbollah-run hospital was reported shelled Monday--and on the outskirts of Tyre, the southern port city that Israel warned inhabitants to evacuate Sunday.

In Beirut, the mood was unmistakably grim.

With antiaircraft guns pointing skyward throughout the city, warships on the horizon, ambulances racing through terror-filled streets and the dull thud of more strikes by attack helicopters on the southern suburbs, a sense of dread that the city of 1.2 million people is moving backward in time--toward its not-so-distant war-torn past--increased.

Shortly after 5 p.m. local time, a loud boom shook the city and residents looked up to see a column of smoke and fire rising from the power station on the heights of Bsalim, five miles northeast of Beirut. Like the power station at Joumri the day before, it had received a direct hit from an Israeli jet.

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As firefighters raced to the scene, power went off across the capital--a huge economic and psychological blow to residents who had begun to have hope that Beirut was finally rising from the ashes of the civil war.

“It’s very bad for morale,” said Wael Souaid, a 28-year-old hotel worker. “Since they have cut electricity, the tourists won’t come back. It will affect everything.”

Across town, at about the same hour, ambulance driver Adwali Mohammad was picking up a girl, about 6 years old, who was wounded when a rocket hit her neighborhood.

Before he could treat her, another rocket slammed down, spraying him with numerous shards of metal. Speaking later at the hospital where he was treated, Mohammad said he did not know what happened to the girl.

The Shiite neighborhoods near Beirut’s airport have been targeted repeatedly since the Israeli campaign, code-named “Operation Grapes of Wrath,” began Thursday. They house the alleged command center of the guerrilla leaders who have been attacking Israel.

The district, several square miles of gray apartment houses and narrow, potholed lanes, looks almost like a state within a state run by Hezbollah.

Billboards of mullahs and martyrs dominate the streets. Gunmen with automatic rifles or plainclothes operatives communicating by radio are at almost every corner, and their mood has turned ugly.

The area is becoming even more packed with Shiite refugees streaming in from southern Lebanon, crowding into schools and sleeping on the floors until Hezbollah workers can find them more appropriate accommodations.

One man, Hassan Adiya, 47, said he piled his wife and 11 children into their car Friday after explosives began falling on their village near Tyre.

“I didn’t want to come, but my children were crying and my wife was begging me,” he said. “There were plenty of bombs, raining like cats and dogs.”

Habib Mohammad, a business student who was helping out at one refugee center and supports Hezbollah, was angry. “Mr. Peres doesn’t know what we are--we are people,” he said, referring to Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres. “He is killing people. He is killing women. He is killing children. And your country doesn’t say anything. . . . Your president and Mr. Peres are the same man.”

In New York, meanwhile, the U.N. Security Council prepared to debate Lebanon’s demand that the world body condemn Israel and apply diplomatic pressure to end the offensive. But diplomats agreed that any negotiated solution to the crisis in Lebanon seems remote.

With U.S. support, France sent Foreign Minister Herve de Charette to the Middle East to try to halt the flare-up. France was taking the lead because it maintains relations with the Islamic government of Iran, which is considered the main sponsor of Hezbollah in Lebanon.

France was the European colonial power in Lebanon before World War II, and French President Jacques Chirac, who recently visited the country, has been a chief promoter of Lebanon’s economic rebirth after the devastating 1975-90 civil war.

U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher was also trying to assist in a mediation effort, conferring by telephone with the foreign ministers of Syria, Lebanon and Israel, the White House said.

“Obviously, our goal is to see what steps can be taken now to restore calm to the border and to minimize the violence which is affecting citizens on both sides,” White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry said.

The United States helped broker a 1993 understanding that followed a similar Israeli offensive against Hezbollah. The understanding, which held up until earlier this year, required Israel and Hezbollah to confine their conflict to military targets in the 9-mile-wide self-declared “security zone” in southern Lebanon that Israel occupies with its proxy South Lebanon Army. Each side now accuses the other of being the first to violate the accord by attacking civilians outside the zone.

The Clinton administration has blamed Hezbollah for the fighting, saying it began the current cycle of violence.

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Despite the diplomatic moves, there were discouraging signals from Israel as Peres told reporters, “It’s too early to negotiate.” Israel has said it will not stop the offensive until Hezbollah stops launching rockets at it, and Peres’ offensive in Lebanon has garnered him strong popular backing among Israelis.

Syria, with 35,000 troops stationed in Lebanon, is key to ending the dispute. The Lebanese government is considered to be under the control of Syrian President Hafez Assad, and Assad is thought to have enough power to muzzle Hezbollah guns if he wishes.

But Syria, like Lebanon, has never made peace with Israel. That Assad has permitted Hezbollah attacks to continue from Lebanon could be part of a larger strategy by the cagey Syrian leader to win the best possible peace deal for Syria, diplomats here believe.