75 Die as Israeli Shells Hit U.N. Post in Lebanon

Two powerful Israeli shells meant for Hezbollah guerrillas Thursday slammed instead into a U.N. compound sheltering civilians, exploding in a whirlwind of heat and shearing metal that killed more than 75 people almost instantly.

As President Clinton urged an immediate cease-fire in Lebanon by all parties, a shocked Israel expressed regret for the carnage and blamed rocket-launching Hezbollah fighters for “hiding behind civilians.”

The annihilating barrage at the U.N. peacekeeping compound in the southern Lebanese town of Qana left mangled and burned bodies strewn across the camp. More than 100 people were wounded, including at least four injured U.N. peacekeepers from Fiji.

By early today, 75 body bags had been sent to a hospital in Sidon, said U.N. spokesman Mikael Lindvall, with many of them containing the remains of two or three people. Hospital officials estimated the final death toll would be more than 90, making it by far the bloodiest incident of Israel’s eight-day “Operation Grapes of Wrath” campaign against the Iranian-backed Hezbollah, or Party of God.

More than 150 people have been killed since April 11, mostly Lebanese civilians, including 11 people killed earlier Thursday when Israeli planes rocketed a suspected Hezbollah apartment house in Nabatiyeh, about 15 miles northeast of Qana.

Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri said he approached leaders of the Islamic fundamentalist group after the attacks Thursday at the behest of the United States, asking them to accept a cease-fire in exchange for an Israeli agreement to stop bombing. “We will do our best to assure a cease-fire [as long as] Israel agrees,” Hariri said. “I hope in 24 hours we will have it.”

He said he expects a reply today.

“Israel will accept the will of the president of the United States,” Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres told CNN. “If the other parties agree to a cease-fire, we shall agree immediately. I think we can negotiate a solution or agreement without shooting at each other.”

However, Israel and Hezbollah continued to exchange fire throughout the night.

United Nations officials expressed outrage at the artillery barrage directed near an 18-year-old U.N. peacekeeper post well-known to the Israeli army. “They know the position so very, very well,” one official said. “I just cannot understand it.”

At the U.N., the Security Council unanimously called for an immediate cease-fire in Lebanon, without singling out either side for condemnation.

The deadly events began shortly before 2 p.m. local time, when suspected Hezbollah guerrillas fired two Katyusha rockets and eight mortars from a cemetery about 1,000 feet from the U.N. compound in Qana, a crossroads town six miles southeast of Tyre, U.N. officials said.

Fifteen minutes later, the Israeli army, operating from its 9-mile-wide “security zone” in southern Lebanon, fired back five high-powered, 155-millimeter shells. Two of the shells were believed to have hit the U.N. compound.

During the current campaign against Hezbollah, which for years has fired rockets from southern Lebanon into northern Israel, the Israeli army has made much of sophisticated new radar systems that allow it to quickly pinpoint the source of the rockets. But the soldiers who fired Thursday from hills about 20 miles south of Qana missed their mark.

“We’re under fire,” a radio operator at the Qana base told other U.N. posts. “Shells are landing on headquarters. People are dying here.”

About 800 men, women and children--peasants from surrounding villages--had flocked to the U.N. quarters seeking sanctuary after the Israeli bombing campaign intensified last weekend.

Most were sitting under an open, thatched hut built by the Fijian peacekeepers to remind them of their Pacific island homeland.

“There was a flash of light, and the wall fell over me,” said one woman, her face covered with cuts, interviewed on Lebanese television from her hospital bed. “So I started yelling. I started calling for my sisters and brothers. Nobody was answering. So I called for my neighbors. No one answered back.”

Television reports from the U.N. compound showed U.N. public affairs worker Hassan Siklawi--a tough-talking man who in recent days had repeatedly braved Israeli artillery fire to take food to people stranded in isolated villages--collapsing in sobs in the arms of a co-worker.

Another man, stumbling aimlessly around the scene and pounding his palms against his temples, shouted, “God, what did they do to us? Oh God, oh God!”

“I could never have imagined I would have to see a massacre anything like this,” said U.N. spokesman Lindvall, one of the first on the scene. “It’s bad enough that civilians are being killed, but to have them killed in a U.N. compound where they are taking shelter for their safety, this is unbelievable.”

U.N. officials had complained repeatedly to the Israeli military in recent days about shelling near U.N. operations and encampments. In Thursday’s attack, an Israeli liaison officer contacted the peacekeepers by phone to warn them about the shelling only after the explosives had fallen.

“The shells came, and then came the warning afterward,” said Lindvall, a former military officer in his native Sweden.

In Israel, Peres, visibly pained and professing “sorrow in my heart” over the tragedy, nonetheless steadfastly defended the Israeli soldiers who fired at the camp, and he blamed the civilian deaths on Hezbollah. Israel has long accused the group of taking cover among civilians.

Standing at a news conference with his chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Amnon Lipkin-Shahak, Peres suggested that the deaths at the U.N. camp might have been avoided if there had been a more rapid response from Syria and Lebanon to a U.S. proposal for ending the fighting.

Syria keeps more than 35,000 troops in Lebanon and controls supply routes from Iran to Hezbollah.

“I grieve for every innocent man, woman and child that is killed on our side of the border or on the other side. I do not distinguish blood from blood. But I do distinguish between offensive aggression and defensive, and Israel has been left with no choice but to defend its citizens,” Peres said.

“And with all the sorrow in my heart, there is no doubt that it is our responsibility and obligation as a state to continue to defend the state and the peace,” he added.

Peres said Hezbollah’s strategy has long been “to hide behind the back” of the citizens of Lebanon.

Thursday was not the first time Hezbollah guerrillas set up their rocket launchers near the U.N. facilities at Qana. A peacekeeper was shot in the chest there last week when he tried to prevent guerrillas from launching a rocket, Lindvall said.

Shahak said there will be a military investigation of the shelling, but his initial view is that “there has been no mistake in judgment here. . . . We will shoot toward whoever is endangering us. I do not know any other game rules.”

An estimated 400,000 people have fled north to escape the Israeli bombardment.

Clinton made his cease-fire appeal in St. Petersburg, Russia, where he arrived Thursday night after a flight from Tokyo.

“Today’s events make painfully clear the importance of bringing an end to the current violence in Lebanon,” Clinton said at the airport. “To achieve that goal, I call upon all parties to agree to an immediate cease-fire. An end to the fighting is essential to allow our diplomatic efforts to go forward.”

He said he will dispatch Secretary of State Warren Christopher to the Middle East to pressure all parties to stop fighting. Special envoy Dennis Ross was already on his way to the region from Washington, he said.

The president’s remarks marked a sharp shift in tone from earlier administration comments, which essentially concurred with Israel in laying the blame for the current crisis on the latest round of Hezbollah attacks.

The deadly attack on refugees drew international criticism on a scale Peres had not heard since launching the operation.

But just how much Israel stood to lose at the bargaining table as a result of the scores of civilian casualties was unclear.

Israel has been demanding that Hezbollah halt rocket attacks on northern Israel and stop operating out of civilian areas in Lebanon. At the same time, the Israeli government wants to avoid Arab demands for a commitment to withdrawing from southern Lebanon, unless that follows the disarming of Hezbollah.

At home, Peres has enjoyed broad public support for the Lebanon campaign, and the shelling of the U.N. compound did not appear to weaken that significantly.

“We don’t have a choice, the government cannot allow rockets to be fired at” northern Israel, said Ora Silverstein, a Tel Aviv student, who added that the incident would most likely “strengthen each person in his opinion” rather than change it.

Earlier Thursday, Peres met with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat for the first time since the militant Islamic group Hamas unleashed a wave of suicide bombings in Israel on Feb. 25, and they vowed to resume peace negotiations.

Daniszewski reported from Beirut and Miller from Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Times staff writer John M. Broder contributed from St. Petersburg.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

U.N. Base Hit

Thursday’s attack on a U.N. base in Lebanon was the bloodiest incident since Israeli troops went on the offensive eight days ago to stop Hezbollah guerrillas from firing rockets into northern Israel.

1. Lebanese civilians are killed by Israeli shellfire at a U.N. compound in southern Lebanon.

2. An apartment building is destroyed by Israeli warplanes.

3. Hezbollah fires more rocket volleys into northern Israel Wednesday night and Thursday morning.

Source: Associated Press