Israeli air raids on three major power stations and a Hizbullah command centre in Lebanon overnight on Monday failed to force a halt to Hizbullah attacks on Israeli soldiers yesterday. The Israeli military command was last night pressing the government to approve a further wave of air strikes.
In the late-night Monday raids, the heaviest assault on Lebanon since last June, Israeli missiles blew up power stations outside Beirut, Tripoli and Baalbek, and a Hizbullah complex in Baalbek, leaving much of Lebanon in darkness for several hours, and injuring 15 civilians.
The Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Ehud Barak, said the raids were meant to "send a signal to Hizbullah, the Lebanese government . . . and the Syrians" that Israel could not tolerate the ongoing attacks by Hizbullah guerrillas inside Israel's self-styled south Lebanon security zone, designed to protect northern Israel from Hizbullah attack.
But hours later clashes in the south resumed, with Lebanese sources reporting an Israeli soldier killed, and Israeli officials reporting the death of a member of its allied militia, the South Lebanon Army. Five more Israeli soldiers have been killed in the fighting within the last month.
Israel had been hoping that after the air raids Syria, which maintains a force of 30,000 soldiers in Lebanon, would rein in the Hizbullah guerrillas. But after a series of telephone contacts Syrian officials, the Lebanese government and Hizbullah leaders came out with a unified response: accusing Israel of breaching a series of understandings, reached four years ago, that are intended to limit the scope of warfare; and pledging continued resistance against the Israeli presence in the security zone.
With rumours rife of further imminent Israeli action, and fears of a more forceful Hizbullah response that might include rocket fire into northern Israel, hundreds of thousands of Israelis spent much of yesterday and the night in bomb shelters. Thousands more fled south.
Each day's intensifying violence makes the prospect of a resumption of Israeli-Syrian peace talks, stalled since last month, more remote, to Mr Barak's dismay. He had hoped the talks would progress rapidly and embrace the Lebanese, enabling him to honour a pre-election pledge to withdraw Israel's forces from the security zone to the international border by the summer, in an orderly, secure fashion.
Michael Jansen reports:
In response to Monday night's Israeli air raids, the Lebanese Prime Minister, Mr Selim Hoss, said: "If the Israelis are attacking Lebanon to make us accept the occupation, then they will be disappointed."
Mr Hoss argued that the midnight raids constituted a blatant violation of the April 1996 understanding prohibiting attacks against civilians and civilian areas. He contrasted Israel's violation with Hizbullah's policy of limiting attacks to military targets within occupied Lebanese territory.
Israeli jets struck south Lebanon again last night, wounding three civilians in attacks on a building in the port city of Tyre and rocketing suspected Hizbullah targets, witnesses and security sources said.
An Israeli army statement issued in Jerusalem confirmed the raids, which hit the outskirts of Ain Bouswar village, a guerrilla stronghold, and a residential building near the Tyre municipality. Witnesses had earlier said the municipal building had been hit.
In Tyre, witnesses said the civilians, identified as Mr Kamal Mroue and his two sons, were hurt by rockets that landed in their apartment.