Israel Bombs Lebanese Bridges, Power Plants

In a sharp escalation of the conflict in Lebanon, Israeli jets bombed power stations and bridges near Beirut on Thursday, plunging much of the city into darkness in attacks targeting Lebanon’s civilian infrastructure for the first time in more than three years.

The strikes came in retaliation for heavy rocket fire by Hezbollah guerrillas earlier Thursday against towns and farms in northern Israel.

The airstrikes and Katyusha rocket bombardments continued well past midnight.

Two Israelis were reported killed and at least 12 injured, an army spokeswoman said. Wire service reports today said that at least six people in Lebanon were dead and dozens injured in at least five air raids.

The attacks were the most serious since 1996, when Israel launched a large-scale incursion that resulted in the deaths of more than 200 Lebanese civilians and the displacement of thousands more.

Israeli officials said the attacks on the Jamhour station in the hills above Beirut, a second power plant in east Beirut, several bridges south of the capital, and guerrilla outposts in southern and eastern Lebanon were authorized by outgoing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Israel’s New Premier Not Consulted

Netanyahu did not consult his successor, Ehud Barak, who is trying to put together a coalition government after defeating Netanyahu in last month’s elections.

For more than 20 years, Israel, with the help of its proxy force, the South Lebanon Army, has occupied a 9-mile-wide strip of southern Lebanon along the border to protect northern Israel. Hezbollah is waging a low-level war to try to force the Israelis out.

Barak promised during his election campaign to pull Israeli troops out of Lebanon within a year, but he will need an agreement with Syria, Lebanon’s powerful neighbor, before he can. Many Israelis noted with some bitterness Thursday that Hezbollah’s rocket barrages came only a day after an exchange of pleasantries between Barak and Syrian President Hafez Assad that many here took as a sign of hope.

Netanyahu ordered the strikes after about 25 Katyusha rockets struck northern Israel in rare daylight bombardments, an army spokeswoman said. The army characterized the Hezbollah attacks, which forced thousands of civilians into bomb shelters, as “savage.”

But the loss of life came later, with two Israelis reported killed in barrages after Israel launched its airstrikes.

“Hezbollah is making a serious mistake if it thinks it can strike with impunity against the residents of our northern regions during the transition of power in Israel,” Netanyahu said after the air raids began.

Both Sides Claim They Were Retaliating

In Beirut, the Iranian-backed Hezbollah said it had fired the rockets to avenge Israel’s “targeting of civilians” in southern Lebanon, where a 40-year-old woman was wounded earlier in the day by shells fired by the South Lebanon Army.

Under rules worked out in a 1996 agreement, each side promised to attack only military targets and to keep civilian areas out of their long-running conflict.

Israel’s army Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Shaul Mofaz said Israel had no choice but to respond to guerrilla attacks.

“In the face of such incidents, we must respond in order to maintain the power of deterrence against Hezbollah,” Mofaz said. He said the wounding of the Lebanese woman by the South Lebanon Army had been an accident, and characterized Hezbollah’s response as disproportionate.

Israeli army leaders, residents of the northern border region and some military analysts have been pressuring the Israeli government to take a tougher line against Hezbollah attacks.

“We cannot continue being hostages of Hezbollah,” Yehuda Shavit, the head of a residents council in the north, told Israel TV on Thursday night. “I call upon the government to pull itself together and provide an answer so the citizens may live in peace.”

But in Beirut, Rashid Kano, a 34-year-old television employee, said the air raids and resulting darkness brought back memories of Lebanon’s not-so-distant civil war, with its attendant fears and frequent power outages.

“It feels just like the old days,” Kano said by telephone. “It’s very depressing.”