BEIRUT (AP) — Israel has widened its offensive on Lebanon, with fighter bombers blasting the airport for a second day, residential buildings in the southern suburbs of the capital, igniting fuel storage tanks and cutting the main highway to Syria.
Lebanese guerrillas retaliated for the air strikes, firing Katyusha rockets into three settlements in northern Israel early Friday.
An Israeli police officer runs to the site where a Hezbollah- fired rocket directly hit a building in the northern coastal town of Nahariya, yesterday.
Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora issued a statement that U.S. President George W. Bush had promised him in a phone call to press Israel to halt its attacks on Lebanon, which killed three people and wounded 55 others overnight, police said Friday.
“President Bush affirmed his readiness to put pressure on Israel to limit the damage to Lebanon as a result of the current military action, and to spare civilians from harm,” the statement said.
Beirut airport officials said one of their three runways was hit by two Israeli missiles at mid-morning Friday. The airport had been closed since Israeli fighter-bombers struck its runways early Thursday.
The overnight death toll brought to 61 the number of people killed since Wednesday when Israel began retaliating for the capture of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah guerrillas in a raid across the southern Lebanese border. One of the fatalities was a Hezbollah guerrilla, according to the militant group. Police said 60 civilians have been killed and 170 wounded.
Israel’s offensive had several goals: to pressure Hezbollah to release the Israeli soldiers, to push the guerrilla group away from Israel’s northern border and to exact a price from Lebanon’s government for allowing Hezbollah to operate freely in the south.
Many Israelis were shocked Thursday when two rockets hit Haifa, the country’s third largest city, and 30 kilometres south of Lebanon. No guerrilla rocket had ever reached that far into Israel.
In Friday’s attack, rockets hit the Israeli settlements of Nurit, Ezen Menahem and the town of Nahariya, where a woman was killed Thursday. There were no casualties Friday.
Israeli army spokesman Capt. Jacob Dallal said 220,000 Israelis were sitting in bomb shelters in north Israel on Friday to avoid the rockets. Two Israelis have been killed and about 50 wounded by rocket fire since Wednesday.
The Israeli offensive caused political waves in Lebanon. Hezbollah was criticized by anti-Syrian politicians who accused the militant group of acting unilaterally and dragging the country into a costly confrontation with Israel.
“Hezbollah is playing a dangerous game that exceeds the border of Lebanon,” Druze leader Walid Jumblatt said in comments published Friday.
But Jumblatt, a leading anti-Syrian figure, also denounced the Israeli attacks on Lebanon, calling them completely unjustified.
Israeli planes set fire to fuel storage tanks at Beirut airport late Thursday and at the Jiye power station south of Beirut early Friday. They blasted the highway between Beirut and Damascus at several places, forcing motorists to take mountain side roads to the Syrian capital.
The fighter bombers also struck overpasses, intersections and residential buildings around Hezbollah’s security headquarters in the Beirut suburb of Haret Hreik. But they missed the headquarters itself.
An AP photographer who toured the area Friday said he saw no traces of damage or devastation around Hezbollah’s security building.
In Jerusalem, the Israeli military spokesman’s office said the Hezbollah security headquarters was targeted in the air strikes.
Hezbollah media chief Hussein Rahal Friday confirmed Hezbollah’s “security square” in southern Beirut had not been hit and told The Associated Press that reports to the contrary were ”not true.”
The air strikes in the area of the headquarters knocked down an overpass, badly damaged another, sheered off the facades of buildings, shattered apartment windows and sent balconies crashing onto cars parked below.
One of those clearing away broken glass at his shop, Fadi Haidar, 36, estimated the damage to his electrical appliances store at $10,000-$15,000 US.
“I have huge debts and now my store is damaged. But Israel is our enemy and every Muslim must make a sacrifice,” he said.
He rejected criticism of Hezbollah and its leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, for kidnapping the Israeli soldiers.
“As time goes by, they will all realize that Sayyed Nasrallah is right and is working in the interest of Muslims,” he said.
A young man with blood pouring down his face and onto his bare chest was shown on Lebanese TV walking out of a damaged apartment building.
The TV showed a missile had gouged a huge crater out of the main Mar Mikhail crossroads in southern Beirut.
Firemen were seen struggling to put out several fires as glass, aluminum siding and stones littered the streets.
Israeli warships shelled the coastal highway north of Sidon, slowing down traffic considerably but not actually cutting the road, witnesses reported.
Israeli planes also hit transmission antennas for local TV stations in the eastern Bekaa Valley, a Hezbollah stronghold. Anwar Raja of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine — General Command said the planes struck the communications towers, but did not hit the guerrillas’ base at Qousaya.
Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah warned Israel on Thursday not to attack Beirut, threatening to retaliate with by firing rockets at Haifa in northern Israel. However, Hezbollah denied responsibility for the two rockets that did hit the city on Thursday.
The Lebanese government has asked the United Nations Security Council to demand a ceasefire. It has also said it had no prior knowledge of the Hezbollah raid in which the Israeli soldiers were kidnapped and that it did not condone it.
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