LEBANON: Israel pounds south Lebanon while Fatah leader says Hizbollah attacks will continue.

Israel pummelled south Lebanon with air and artillery strikes on Thursday (July 27), but opted against launching a major invasion in pursuit of Hizbollah guerrillas. Members of Hizbollah organised a media tour in the guerilla group's security zone located in Beirut's southern suburbs. The already impoverished and overcrowded Beer al Abed and Haret Hreik areas, where many of Hizbollah institutions are located, have been reduced to rubble following almost daily air raids since July 13, a day after Hizbollah kidnapped two Israeli soldiers in cross border fighting. At least 434 people, most of them civilians, have been killed in Lebanon, where a humanitarian crisis has exploded. Fifty-one Israelis, including 18 civilians, have been killed. "What should I say? The destruction here expresses how civilised the Americans and the Israelis are. What you see here is a safe residential area. There are no militants here," said Beirut resident Hassan al Mukdad as he toured the area around his own home. Hospitals in the capital are crowded with casualties from across the country, some of whom are being spoken to by international aid agencies. "It's very disturbing to see that Israel is using cluster bombs in populated areas because we documented in Iraq and in Kosovo the severe effect on the civilian population of the use of this very indiscriminate weapon," said Peter Bouckaert, emergency director at Human Rights Watch, after speaking to patients in one Beirut hospital. The United States has given Israel a green light to pursue its assault on Lebanon by refusing to call for an immediate ceasefire or to let the U.N. Security Council do so. An international conference in Rome on Wednesday (July 26) failed to call for an immediate end to hostilities and urged U.N. Security Council foreign ministers to meet early next week to work on a ceasefire resolution. But both international and local representatives expressed disappointment with the conference's outcome. "It is absolutely necessary that the Lebanese know that in Europe there are people for peace. There are movements that are protests against this war of aggression and which aim for an immediate ceasefire as a condition to begin discussions over political solutions," said Miguel Portas, a member of the European parliament. Foreign ministers at the Rome conference pledged to work urgently for a "lasting, permanent and sustainable" ceasefire but did not call for an immediate truce, as Lebanon and its Arab allies had demanded. Washington stuck to its stance that the the conflict's root causes must be tackled first. "They are trying to deceive the people. I am right or wrong? Everything is a failure in Lebanon," said one angry Beirut resident. "It was useless," said another one. A seven storey building belonging to Hizbollah was destroyed on the same day the diplomats were meeting in Rome. As local residents toured the area on Thursday, they viewed household appliances and family photographs among the personal effects buried in the rubble. Photographs taken by the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) on Wednesday showed the full extent of the destruction of an observation post demolished by Israeli air strikes a day earlier. The strike killed four unarmed U.N. observers and drew international condemnation. Hizbollah has fired more than 1,400 rockets into northern Israel since the conflict erupted following a cross-border raid into Israel by the Shi'ite militia on July 12, in which two soldiers were abducted. "Today is the 16th day of war and the bombing of the Israeli settlement hasn't stopped. I believe if the war continues for several months, Hizbollah will have the capacity to continue bombing those settlements," Fatah leader Sulatn Abu El Einen said. Hizbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah has vowed to take the war deeper into Israel, suggesting there could be strikes south of the city of Haifa. Tyre, a Hizbollah stronghold, has witnessed some of the worse fighting since the conflict began. A number of civilians were sent to hospitals in the southern town on Thursday after Israeli shelling on neighbouring towns and villages. Many other healthy residents waited to be evacuated to safety. Burnt cars and trucks are left on abandoned streets in the Bekka Valley, also the target of Israeli shells and bombs.

ITN Source | July 28, 2006

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