At least 40 Lebanese civilians, 33 of them said to be Syrian farm workers, were killed yesterday in Israeli aerial strikes, while Hizbullah rocket fire intensified, with three people killed as over 200 rockets slammed into northern Israel, writes Peter Hirschberg in Jerusalem
For the first time, Hizbullah last night fired missiles at the coastal town of Hadera, some 20km (12 miles) north of Tel Aviv and the southernmost point that missiles have landed since fighting erupted more than three weeks ago. The missiles landed in an open area and there were no casualties.
Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah had threatened on Thursday to strike Tel Aviv if Israel renewed its bombing of Beirut, which it did early yesterday.
Lebanese police and Red Cross officials said most of the dead in Israeli air strikes on the village of Qaa in northeast Lebanon were Syrian farm workers who had been loading fruit into a refrigerated truck.
The Israeli military said that the air force had hit two buildings in the area, which the army suspected were being used to store ammunition that had been trucked in for Hizbullah.
Seven people were killed and 10 wounded later yesterday, Lebanese police said, when a house in the village of Taibeh, in south Lebanon, was hit in an Israeli air strike. The deaths brought to at least 720 the number of Lebanese killed since the fighting began.
Israeli planes also bombed four bridges on the highway leading north from Beirut, cutting the last passable road link between the Lebanese capital and Syria.
UN officials said the destruction of the bridges would seriously hamper aid efforts.
Israel says it has bombed bridges to prevent trucks filled with rockets for Hizbullah from reaching their destination in Lebanon.
Two of the Israelis killed in yesterday's rocket attacks - Hizbullah again fired over 200 rockets at Israel - died when a restaurant was hit in the Arab village of Majdal Krum.
The third fatality, a 27-year-old Druze woman, was killed when a rocket struck her home in the village of Maghrar in northern Israel.
Nine of the 30 Israeli civilians killed so far by rockets have been Arabs and Mr Nasrallah has apologised in the past, saying those who have been killed in Arab villages are martyrs.
Fierce fighting between Israeli troops and Hizbullah guerillas continued yesterday in south Lebanon where Israel is trying to carve out an eight kilometre-wide buffer zone, which is meant to prevent Hizbullah fighters from approaching the border.
Three Israeli soldiers were killed when they were hit by an anti-tank missile as they were walking near the village of Markaba in south Lebanon, bringing to 44 the number of soldiers killed in the fighting.
Israel says it has killed at least 200 Hizbullah fighters, while the Shia group admits to only around 40 of its men having been killed.
Israel's inability to stem the rocket fire has sparked a debate among political leaders over how far north the ground operation should be expanded.
Defence Minister Amir Peretz believes thousands more troops should be committed to the ground offensive - some 10,000 are already operating in Lebanon - and that the army should push all the way to the Litani River, some 20-30km north of the Israeli border.
But prime minister Ehud Olmert is said to be reluctant to expand the ground operation and wants the army to establish its control over a buffer zone that will extend some 10km into Lebanon and which Israel will relinquish once an international peacekeeping force is deployed in south Lebanon.
While the defence minister believes that advancing all the way to the Litani will push Hizbullah's short-range rockets out of range of Israeli towns, the prime minister believes that it will not solve the rocket problem because the Shia group has longer-range missiles that could be fired from beyond the Litani River.