Bekaa Valley Raid Is Called a Boost for Israeli Forces

Witnesses said the Dar al Hikma hospital in Baalbek was empty but for guards and Hezbollah fighters when the Israeli Apache helicopters struck at 10:15 p.m. Tuesday.

What followed was a withering, close-quarters fight between the guerrillas and Israeli commandos in the heart of the Bekaa Valley, 60 miles from the Israel-Lebanon border. It marked the deepest penetration for Israeli forces into Lebanon in the 22-day conflict.

The choreographed way the several dozen helicopters and fighters coursed up and down the Bekaa Valley suggested more than one agenda, witnesses said. Among them: a strike against a cache of more-lethal Hezbollah weapons, a mission to capture Hezbollah leaders, or simply a demonstration of Israel’s ability to strike swiftly, decisively and at will.

The result -- at least five captured Hezbollah guerrillas and no Israeli casualties -- was hailed Wednesday in Israel as a clear boost for the country’s forces after weeks of cloudier outcomes and outright setbacks.

But Hezbollah leader Mohammed Yazbek, rumored to be the target of the operation, spoke by telephone to the guerrilla organization’s television station Wednesday to prove that he had not been captured, the Associated Press reported. Early in the attack, the group had said its fighters had trapped the elite Israeli soldiers in the hospital.

Approaching in darkness, commandos were dropped off by helicopters and covered by fire from the aircraft, according to the Israeli military.

The commandos split up, one group heading into the neighborhood near the hospital, the other entering the building and killing four armed guards at the entrance, Israeli Col. Nitzan Alon said.

“Our forces took control of the entrances of the hospital,” said Alon, commander of the operation codenamed “Sharp and Smooth” in Hebrew.

In the hospital, which Israelis also believed housed Hezbollah offices, the commandos moved room to room, clearing the way with stun grenades.

“Then, while our forces were taking control of the building, [Hezbollah] reinforcements continued to arrive and were hit by ground and air forces,” Alon said.

Inside the four-story building, troops fanned out from the basement to the top floors, he said during a Tel Aviv media briefing. Outside, they came under fire from nearby houses.

The Israeli military said the commandos came out six hours later without a single casualty.

Israel said it captured five fighters and killed 19 in the strike on the outskirts of the city famous for its Roman ruins. Lebanese authorities reported six captured, 11 killed.

Elias Hanna, a retired Lebanese general and security expert, said that in addition to the hunt for high-ranking Hezbollah leaders, Israel may also have been searching for larger, more lethal weapons held by the rear guard.

Israeli military analysts speculated that the raid also could have been an attempt to rescue Israeli soldiers Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser, who were captured in the July 12 Hezbollah raid that set off the current conflict.

Whatever the goal, Israeli military analyst Ron Ben-Yishai called the results a “tie-breaker.”

“Even if the objectives weren’t achieved in full, the raid in Baalbek undermines the myth of ground supremacy nurtured by Hezbollah,” Ben-Yishai wrote on the newspaper Yediot Aharonot’s YNET website. “It doesn’t matter whether the units succeeded in reaching 100% of their goals -- when the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] succeeds in penetrating the organization’s most important military and civilian stronghold at a time it is on highest alert, this is a grave blow to morale.”

In preparation for the landing by commando forces, helicopter-fired rockets and heavy machine-gun bursts raked the area near the hospital. Power cuts plunged Baalbek and surrounding villages into darkness. Flares lighted the night sky and smoke billowed from the hospital.

Residents said the swooping helicopters came in four waves.

Israeli officials said warplanes also made at least 10 bombing runs, striking the Baalbek neighborhoods thought to be home to Hezbollah figures.

“Forces were dropped off by helicopters and their task was to locate and hit terrorists approaching the area,” Alon said. He said the Israeli special forces soldiers searched homes in the Sheik Habib neighborhood, recovering a 20-millimeter machine gun and light weapons.

Alon said a neighboring house was discovered to be a weapons storage site and it was targeted for an airstrike.

A Baalbek journalist said the Israelis also attacked a Bedouin tent on a nearby potato farm in Jamaliyeh, killing seven people, including a women and her five children, 3 to 16 years old.

The Israeli military showed journalists a film that included aerial footage of helicopters approaching the drop zone in darkness, and of a group of Hezbollah fighters moving toward the Israeli forces and being fired upon from the air. Also shown were scenes of an Israeli soldier moving through the hospital, searching a cabinet and lifting what appeared to be an automatic rifle out of a drawer.

The fighting ended about 4 a.m., and the Israeli soldiers returned safely to base, the army said.

Israeli media reports identified three of the captured men as Hussein Nasrallah -- not believed to be related to Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah -- Hussein Burji and Ahmed Ghotah. They were described as low-ranking members of the group.

Despite reports that Israel had hoped to snare Yazbek, the senior Hezbollah figure, the army’s chief of staff, Dan Halutz, said the raid was not aimed at any particular person.

Asked whether any of the captured men were “big fish,” Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told the Associated Press, “They are tasty fishes.” Olmert also said in the AP interview that the hospital in question was “no hospital -- this is a base of the Hezbollah in disguise.”

Baalbek, about 45 miles northeast of Beirut on a perch overlooking the Bekaa Valley, is famous as the place where Julius Caesar installed a Roman legion and ordered the construction of the magnificent Temple of Jupiter, with dramatic Corinthian columns that still stand today.

A major tourist destination, Baalbek is the site of a summer music festival in July and August, canceled this year because of the conflict. The last performance, a musical comedy, was July 12, the day the fighting began.

In the early 1980s, Baalbek and the surrounding Bekaa Valley also became known as the main military training ground for the militias of the militant Lebanese Hezbollah, or Party of God. Members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard first arrived there in 1981, indoctrinating the population with the teachings of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

Since then, Baalbek has been a major Hezbollah stronghold in the north, second only to Beirut in importance.

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Tempest reported from Beirut and King from Jerusalem. Times special correspondent Vita Bekker in Tel Aviv contributed to this report.