LEBANON: Hizbollah rockets and Israeli incursions continue as Lebanese official says damage runs to 2.5 billion U.S. dollars

Hizbollah guerrillas battled thousands of Israeli troops on five fronts in south Lebanon on Wednesday (August 2), Lebanese security sources said. They said Israeli artillery pounded frontier villages as tank-led forces closed in on Hizbollah-held territories. Guerrillas were firing back mortars, anti-tank rockets and machineguns. Hizbollah said its forces had destroyed four tanks and a bulldozer in the fighting. The Israeli army said that during "sporadic exchanges of fire" in south Lebanon two Israeli soldiers were lightly wounded. It said there were no reports of damage to military vehicles. The guerrillas killed three Israeli soldiers and wounded 25 in battles in the border village of Aita al-Shaab on Tuesday (August 1). An Israeli general said up to 6,000 troops were taking part in the ground fighting. On the outskirts of the southern Lebanese town of Tyre, explosions were heard and smoke could be seen rising in the distance. Rescue workers continued to recover bodies from under the rubble in villages hit by Israel's bombardment. In villages near Tyre, 10 bodies were recovered from the rubble and taken to the town's main hospital for possible identification by relatives. The bodies were recovered from several unidentified villages. In Nabatieh, where fighting has been fierce, local rescue workers dug up the remains of a body. The identity of the person was not known and it was unclear how long it had been trapped under the destroyed house. More than 60 bodies have been recovered since Monday (July 31) after Israel agreed to a 48 hour air strike suspension. The 48 hours have expired, but rescue workers continued to search for bodies and assist those in areas worst hit by the violence. In the mountains near Khiam and Maraoun, shelling continued. Hizbollah guerrillas fired 150 rockets into Israel and fought the Israeli troops after helicopter-borne Israeli commandos attacked Hizbollah targets in the ancient city of Baalbek. Air strikes in support of the helicopter raid on the ancient city of Baalbek in northeastern Lebanon killed 19 people, including four children. Hizbollah said it had hit the Israeli town of Beit Shean, almost 70 km (45 miles) from the border, with "Khaibar 1" rockets to avenge Israeli attacks on civilians in Lebanon. The Hizbollah salvo, which killed one person in the northern city of Nahariya, followed a two-day lull in such attacks. At least 643 people in Lebanon and 55 Israelis have been killed in the conflict, now in its fourth week. Lebanon's health minister puts the toll at 762, including unrecovered bodies. At least 750,000 Lebanese, almost a quarter of the population, have been driven from their homes. The International Committee of the Red Cross sent a ship carrying humanitarian aid to Tyre on Wednesday. The aid included food and medication which the Red Cross said would be distributed to families in Tyre and those living in neighbouring villages. Many of them have been cut off from main areas due to Israel's three weeks of bombardment. The Red Cross said it will give 100 million Swiss francs (81 million U.S. dollars) to provide assistance to civilians. International humanitarian agencies began delivering supplies to areas worse hit in the south but access for desperately needed aid convoys is still difficult, the United Nations said. The United Nations estimates up to 900,000 people have been displaced by the bombing and fighting in Lebanon but many civilians are still trapped, too poor to get transport or too scared to run the gauntlet of Israeli air strikes. Looking at the costs of the conflict, the head of the Development and Reconstruction Council, Alfadel Shalak said the three weeks of Israeli bombardment have inflicted 2.5 billion U.S. dollars worth of damage on Lebanon's infrastructure. "At the beginning, the damages inflicted by Israel were two billion (U.S. dollars). After one week, that increased to 2.5 billion (U.S. dollars). So, within one week, the damages inflicted increased by another half a billion U.S. dollars," said Shalak. "For a country the size of Lebanon, that is a huge loss. This escalation shows the proportion of the catastrophe and the aggression of this war," Shalak added. The bombardment has cut off many roads, bridges and flyovers in the south and the east of the country as well as putting the country's only international airport and ports out of action. Transport and Public Works Minister Mohammed al-Safadi said on Wednesday it would take at least three months to bring the airport back up to full capacity. Two runways can be temporarily patched up in days but a third will take three months to fix, hampering the speed of recovery once hostilities end. A bridge on the main international highway between Beirut and Damascus, the highest in the Middle East, will take around four years to rebuild. Direct income to the government treasury from the airport alone is 15 million (U.S. dollars) a month, Safadi said, but the biggest cost to the Lebanese economy is from lost business. Trade and tourism are now both at standstill amid an Israeli air and sea blockade. Land routes, heavily used by trucks carrying goods from Beirut port to Syria and beyond, are hit. Israel has struck the radars and fuel tanks at the ports, with port buildings in Tripoli and Tyre badly damaged. Beirut port has been spared the worst, though it is now idle except for incoming humanitarian aid convoys and outgoing foreign evacuees. Lebanon, which borrowed heavily to rebuild after the end of its 1975-1990 civil war, is hoping to attract foreign aid to help with the reconstruction once the conflict ends. Beirut airport was quite new, rebuilt since the war, as were many of the roads and bridges now broken or punched with holes. Lebanon had begun to attract droves of Arab tourists and investors in recent years, until the latest war scared them off. Lebanon hopes Arab governments will help it pay for reconstruction after Israeli bombing ends. Saudi Arabia has already pledged 500 million (U.S. dollars) and Kuwait 300 million (U.S. dollars) to help Lebanon rebuild.

ITN Source | August 3, 2006

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