500,000 Israelis Living in Bomb Shelters
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http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/w-me/2006/jul/29/072908510.html
Maybe fewer Israeli's are dying, not just because Hizbollah is inept, but because half a million Jew's are wise enough to move to safety during a war.
0728dv-lebanon-custom Hezbollah launched a new kind of rocket Friday that made the deepest strike into Israel yet, rattling Israelis as their warplanes and artillery targeted guerrillas in attacks on apartment buildings and roads.
Lebanese officials said about 12 civilians died in the day's fighting; Israel said it killed 26 militants, raising to about 230 the total number killed in the campaign.
Hezbollah's launching of the new weapon unnerved Israelis, 500,000 of whom are already living in northern shelters because of rocket bombardments. The rocket firing was also likely to escalate a conflict now in its 18th day, with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice heading back to the Middle East this weekend to make a second attempt to resolve the crisis.
The guerrillas said they used the Khaibar-1 - named after the site of a historic battle between Islam's Prophet Muhammad and Jewish tribes in the Arabian peninsula - to strike the Israeli town of Afula.
"With this, the Islamic Resistance begins a new stage of fighting, challenge and confrontation with a strong determination and full belief in God's victory," Hezbollah said in a statement.
Five of the rockets crashed into empty fields outside Afula, causing no injuries. Still, Israel deployed a Patriot interceptor missile battery north of Tel Aviv, believing the area could be in range of Hezbollah's barrages.
Israel said the Khaibar-1 rockets were renamed, Iranian-made Fajr-5s. They have four times the power and range of Katyusha rockets, making them able to hit Tel Aviv's northern outskirts.
Hundreds of Katyushas have hit northern Israel in the current fighting, including 96 on Friday, one of which hit a hospital. The Afula strike came two days after Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah vowed his guerrillas would fire rockets beyond Haifa, Israel's third-largest city, which has been hit repeatedly in the conflict.
A top U.N. peacekeeping official said he thought the war could continue until the end of August and voiced fears Israel would flatten Lebanon's southern villages and destroy the port of Tyre "neighborhood by neighborhood" if Hezbollah rockets keep slamming into the Jewish state.
At U.N. peacekeeping headquarters in Naqoura, barely a stone's throw from Israel, political affairs officer Ryszard Morczynski said Tyre would become a target of intense Israeli attacks because Hezbollah was firing rockets from the city's suburbs into Haifa.
Although possessing overwhelming firepower, Israel has made no threats to destroy Lebanese cities and villages. Israel has stressed that it is not fighting the Lebanese people or government, but will go after Hezbollah wherever it finds the militants.
Rice's second trip to the region comes as diplomatic efforts are solidifying into two sharply divided camps. Most agree on the idea of bringing international forces into the south to end Hezbollah's decade-long free rein here - but still unresolved is how and when.
In Washington, President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair said they want an international force dispatched quickly to southern Lebanon. But they said any plan to end the fighting must address the long-term issue of disarming Hezbollah.
"This is a moment of intense conflict in the Middle East," Bush said. "Yet our aim is to turn it into a moment of opportunity and a chance for broader change in the region."
French President Jacques Chirac said his country will press for the rapid adoption of a U.N. Security Council resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire, increasing the pressure on the United States and Israel.
A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the discussions, said possible elements of a Rice proposal to resolve the crisis included an international agreement on a U.N.-mandated multinational force, disarming Hezbollah and integrating the guerrilla force into the Lebanese army; urging Hezbollah to return Israeli prisoners; a commitment to resolve border issues and an international reconstruction plan for Lebanon.
In Beirut, Hezbollah politicians signed on to a proposed peace package that includes strengthening an international force in south Lebanon and disarming the guerrillas, the government said. The agreement, reached at a Cabinet meeting, was the first time that Hezbollah has agreed to a proposal for ending the crisis that includes the deploying of international forces.
The package falls short of American and Israeli demands in that it calls for an immediate cease-fire before working out details of a force and includes other conditions. But European Union officials said it forms a basis for an agreement.
The uncertainty allowed the offensive to persist with a new dimension of destruction emerging - the environment.
Beaches in Beirut were black with oil spilled from a power station that was blasted by Israel two weeks ago and was still burning. In the south, rescue workers dug through the rubble of bombed houses, looking for bodies.
Early Saturday, two Israeli air raids destroyed a bridge on the Orontes river in the Bekaa Valley, largely cutting off the town of Hermel from the rest of the country. There were no casualties, residents said.
Late Friday, the Israeli army said it killed 26 Hezbollah guerrillas in fighting for the Shiite town of Bint Jbail. The army did not report Israeli casualties, but Israel Radio said six soldiers were wounded.
Hezbollah has verified 35 guerrilla casualties. The competing claims could not be resolved independently.
Hezbollah said its guerrillas attacked Israeli troops on a ridge overlooking Bint Jbail and in Maroun al-Ras, a nearby villages that Israeli troops overran last weekend. The guerrillas said five Israeli soldiers were wounded.
Eight Israelis died fighting for control of Bint Jbail on Wednesday, the highest toll of the campaign. Bint Jbail had the largest Shiite community along the border; it was known as the "capital of the resistance" during Israel's 1982-2000 occupation because of its vehement support for the Shiite Hezbollah.
The Israel army said a half-million Israelis were living in shelters in northern Israel. U.N. humanitarian chief Jan Egeland told CNN that 800,000 Lebanese had fled or were caught in crossfire.
The Israeli offensive began after Hezbollah guerrillas killed three soldiers and captured two others in a cross-border raid into Israel. The war with Hezbollah opened a second front for Israel, which was already battling Palestinians in Gaza after Hamas militants seized a soldier in a cross-border raid June 25.
Israeli tanks and troops pulled back to the Israel-Gaza border Friday after an unusually deadly incursion that killed 30 Palestinians over three days. The army said the withdrawal was temporary.
On Israel's border with Lebanon, the United Nations decided to move 50 unarmed observers from their posts to the better-protected positions of 2,000 lightly armed U.N. peacekeepers after an Israeli bomb killed four observers this week.
With medicine, food and shelter trickling into the war zone in southern Lebanon, Egeland called for a three-day truce to let help aid get in and enable thousands of civilians trapped in the heat of the battle to get out - a call that got no response.
In southern Lebanon, Israeli missile strikes and artillery rained down around towns and roads targeting rocket sites and buildings believed connected to Hezbollah but wreaking destruction in populated areas.
One airstrike flattened a house in the village of Hadatha, and six people inside were believed dead or wounded, the Lebanese state news agency reported. Hezbollah's al-Manar TV said all six were dead.
Missiles destroyed three buildings in the village of Kfar Jouz near the market town of Nabatiyeh, apparently targeting the apartment of a Hezbollah activist. A Jordanian was killed in a nearby house, and the blasts collapsed a shelter, killing a Lebanese husband and wife.
Three women were killed in strikes on their homes in other southern villages, security officials said. A wounded woman was rushed to the hospital in the village of Ain Arab, and more people were believed trapped in the debris of a destroyed building there.
An explosion, believed to be from Israeli artillery, hit a convoy evacuating villagers from Rmeish, lightly wounding a driver and a Lebanese cameraman for German TV news. Another strike hit a potato truck and a nearby car, wounding three.
At least 445 people have been killed in Lebanon in the fighting, most of them civilians, according to a Health Ministry count Friday based on bodies taken to hospitals. But Lebanon's health minister estimated Thursday that as many as Lebanese 600 civilians have been killed, with other victims buried in rubble.
On the Israeli side, 33 soldiers have died in fighting, and Hezbollah rocket attacks on northern Israel have killed 19 civilians, the Israeli army said.
Maybe fewer Israeli's are dying, not just because Hizbollah is inept, but because half a million Jew's are wise enough to move to safety during a war.
0728dv-lebanon-custom Hezbollah launched a new kind of rocket Friday that made the deepest strike into Israel yet, rattling Israelis as their warplanes and artillery targeted guerrillas in attacks on apartment buildings and roads.
Lebanese officials said about 12 civilians died in the day's fighting; Israel said it killed 26 militants, raising to about 230 the total number killed in the campaign.
Hezbollah's launching of the new weapon unnerved Israelis, 500,000 of whom are already living in northern shelters because of rocket bombardments. The rocket firing was also likely to escalate a conflict now in its 18th day, with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice heading back to the Middle East this weekend to make a second attempt to resolve the crisis.
The guerrillas said they used the Khaibar-1 - named after the site of a historic battle between Islam's Prophet Muhammad and Jewish tribes in the Arabian peninsula - to strike the Israeli town of Afula.
"With this, the Islamic Resistance begins a new stage of fighting, challenge and confrontation with a strong determination and full belief in God's victory," Hezbollah said in a statement.
Five of the rockets crashed into empty fields outside Afula, causing no injuries. Still, Israel deployed a Patriot interceptor missile battery north of Tel Aviv, believing the area could be in range of Hezbollah's barrages.
Israel said the Khaibar-1 rockets were renamed, Iranian-made Fajr-5s. They have four times the power and range of Katyusha rockets, making them able to hit Tel Aviv's northern outskirts.
Hundreds of Katyushas have hit northern Israel in the current fighting, including 96 on Friday, one of which hit a hospital. The Afula strike came two days after Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah vowed his guerrillas would fire rockets beyond Haifa, Israel's third-largest city, which has been hit repeatedly in the conflict.
A top U.N. peacekeeping official said he thought the war could continue until the end of August and voiced fears Israel would flatten Lebanon's southern villages and destroy the port of Tyre "neighborhood by neighborhood" if Hezbollah rockets keep slamming into the Jewish state.
At U.N. peacekeeping headquarters in Naqoura, barely a stone's throw from Israel, political affairs officer Ryszard Morczynski said Tyre would become a target of intense Israeli attacks because Hezbollah was firing rockets from the city's suburbs into Haifa.
Although possessing overwhelming firepower, Israel has made no threats to destroy Lebanese cities and villages. Israel has stressed that it is not fighting the Lebanese people or government, but will go after Hezbollah wherever it finds the militants.
Rice's second trip to the region comes as diplomatic efforts are solidifying into two sharply divided camps. Most agree on the idea of bringing international forces into the south to end Hezbollah's decade-long free rein here - but still unresolved is how and when.
In Washington, President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair said they want an international force dispatched quickly to southern Lebanon. But they said any plan to end the fighting must address the long-term issue of disarming Hezbollah.
"This is a moment of intense conflict in the Middle East," Bush said. "Yet our aim is to turn it into a moment of opportunity and a chance for broader change in the region."
French President Jacques Chirac said his country will press for the rapid adoption of a U.N. Security Council resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire, increasing the pressure on the United States and Israel.
A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the discussions, said possible elements of a Rice proposal to resolve the crisis included an international agreement on a U.N.-mandated multinational force, disarming Hezbollah and integrating the guerrilla force into the Lebanese army; urging Hezbollah to return Israeli prisoners; a commitment to resolve border issues and an international reconstruction plan for Lebanon.
In Beirut, Hezbollah politicians signed on to a proposed peace package that includes strengthening an international force in south Lebanon and disarming the guerrillas, the government said. The agreement, reached at a Cabinet meeting, was the first time that Hezbollah has agreed to a proposal for ending the crisis that includes the deploying of international forces.
The package falls short of American and Israeli demands in that it calls for an immediate cease-fire before working out details of a force and includes other conditions. But European Union officials said it forms a basis for an agreement.
The uncertainty allowed the offensive to persist with a new dimension of destruction emerging - the environment.
Beaches in Beirut were black with oil spilled from a power station that was blasted by Israel two weeks ago and was still burning. In the south, rescue workers dug through the rubble of bombed houses, looking for bodies.
Early Saturday, two Israeli air raids destroyed a bridge on the Orontes river in the Bekaa Valley, largely cutting off the town of Hermel from the rest of the country. There were no casualties, residents said.
Late Friday, the Israeli army said it killed 26 Hezbollah guerrillas in fighting for the Shiite town of Bint Jbail. The army did not report Israeli casualties, but Israel Radio said six soldiers were wounded.
Hezbollah has verified 35 guerrilla casualties. The competing claims could not be resolved independently.
Hezbollah said its guerrillas attacked Israeli troops on a ridge overlooking Bint Jbail and in Maroun al-Ras, a nearby villages that Israeli troops overran last weekend. The guerrillas said five Israeli soldiers were wounded.
Eight Israelis died fighting for control of Bint Jbail on Wednesday, the highest toll of the campaign. Bint Jbail had the largest Shiite community along the border; it was known as the "capital of the resistance" during Israel's 1982-2000 occupation because of its vehement support for the Shiite Hezbollah.
The Israel army said a half-million Israelis were living in shelters in northern Israel. U.N. humanitarian chief Jan Egeland told CNN that 800,000 Lebanese had fled or were caught in crossfire.
The Israeli offensive began after Hezbollah guerrillas killed three soldiers and captured two others in a cross-border raid into Israel. The war with Hezbollah opened a second front for Israel, which was already battling Palestinians in Gaza after Hamas militants seized a soldier in a cross-border raid June 25.
Israeli tanks and troops pulled back to the Israel-Gaza border Friday after an unusually deadly incursion that killed 30 Palestinians over three days. The army said the withdrawal was temporary.
On Israel's border with Lebanon, the United Nations decided to move 50 unarmed observers from their posts to the better-protected positions of 2,000 lightly armed U.N. peacekeepers after an Israeli bomb killed four observers this week.
With medicine, food and shelter trickling into the war zone in southern Lebanon, Egeland called for a three-day truce to let help aid get in and enable thousands of civilians trapped in the heat of the battle to get out - a call that got no response.
In southern Lebanon, Israeli missile strikes and artillery rained down around towns and roads targeting rocket sites and buildings believed connected to Hezbollah but wreaking destruction in populated areas.
One airstrike flattened a house in the village of Hadatha, and six people inside were believed dead or wounded, the Lebanese state news agency reported. Hezbollah's al-Manar TV said all six were dead.
Missiles destroyed three buildings in the village of Kfar Jouz near the market town of Nabatiyeh, apparently targeting the apartment of a Hezbollah activist. A Jordanian was killed in a nearby house, and the blasts collapsed a shelter, killing a Lebanese husband and wife.
Three women were killed in strikes on their homes in other southern villages, security officials said. A wounded woman was rushed to the hospital in the village of Ain Arab, and more people were believed trapped in the debris of a destroyed building there.
An explosion, believed to be from Israeli artillery, hit a convoy evacuating villagers from Rmeish, lightly wounding a driver and a Lebanese cameraman for German TV news. Another strike hit a potato truck and a nearby car, wounding three.
At least 445 people have been killed in Lebanon in the fighting, most of them civilians, according to a Health Ministry count Friday based on bodies taken to hospitals. But Lebanon's health minister estimated Thursday that as many as Lebanese 600 civilians have been killed, with other victims buried in rubble.
On the Israeli side, 33 soldiers have died in fighting, and Hezbollah rocket attacks on northern Israel have killed 19 civilians, the Israeli army said.
Why go home
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I agree. I can hardly believe these Lebanese didnt build government subsidized bomb shelters with the excess riches their country has. And the 1/2 million refugees pouring over the Lebanese border (and lucky enough not to get hit by Israeli gunships) -- well, that is just dumbluck. What a bunch of dummies.
Freedom is Slavery
Ignorance is Strength
and more on the needs of thire people, this war would not be happening.
the deaths of hundreds of innocents should not be justified because 'well they didnt have good enough bomb shelters'.
the israeli government are to blame, and hezbollah of course.
NOT the innocent lebanese. NOT the innocent israelis
Reworded, the israeli govt and hezbollah are to blame, and the lebanese govt for allowing hezbollah to operate outside lebanese law, then.....................
agreed.
www.myspace.com/jensvad
500,000 are living in shelters, like me, The other 500,000 ran away during the last 2 weeks.
*edit: and yes, this is the reason to our "low" number of civilian casualties. Most injured / dead people were hit while they were outside.
Southern Lebanon is a rural and relatively poor area, so they do not have shelters there. Though the Israeli army sent them leaflets which order them to leave as soon as possible, some of them couldn't go because of the damaged infrastructure, others were too afraid to go out (its a war outside), some were held prisoners by Hizbullah, some were unintentionally hit by our air force in their way out, and others (Hizbullah supporters) chose to stay.
Most Lebanese people didn't like the Hizbullah before the war. In addition to that, Hizbullah is financed by Syria and mostly by Iran, not by Lebanon. Lebanon itself was blossoming during the time of prime minister Hariri (2000-2004). That man was considered to be Lebanon's savior. He invested his own private money (he was a very rich guy) and actually rebuilt Lebanon with his 2 hands. He was also started a diplomatic contact with Israel (in order to achieve a peace agreemant), and was knowen as a great Syria/Hizbullah opposer which eventually cost him very high: He was dismissed from his role & murdered by Asad's people.
Fouad Siniora, Lebanon's corrent prime minister was also part of the anti-Syria movment, however he had always showed a bit of support for Hizbullah. He is basically a weak puppet which can't really control or decide anything inside Lebanon.
As you can see, this is not a matter of black or white. Though it doesn't seem that way, Israel is fighting against Hizbullah, not against Lebanon.
lebanon also get mony from other countrys, they must get the money to by all those bombs and rockets from someware
but here is an ingenius idea
let hezbolla stop attacking israel, and them hiding behind the lebonese civvilian population, let the lebanese government, stop aiding and abeting hezbala and them israel will not have to defend itself and nither lebanese nor israeli will need to go to any bomb shelter
it is not israels responsibility to defend the lebanese, that is the responsibility of the lebanese government
i a guy is shooting at your familly, you will shoot back, but if as you shoot back the bullets miss and hit a bystander, who is guilty you who would not be shooting if you were not being shot at, or the person who shot at you first.