ISRAEL: Israeli shelling continues on northern border

Israel continued to batter Lebanon on Friday (July 28), killing 11 people as waves of air raids struck villages in the hills behind the southern port of Tyre and hundreds of artillery rounds crashed across the border. Despite growing international demands for an end to Israel's war on Hizbollah guerrillas, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice delayed a possible return to the region. The pounding of villages, where some civilians remain trapped, followed a decision by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's security cabinet to intensify air strikes and ground forays against Hizbollah, rather than launching a big invasion. Israel has taken Washington's refusal to demand an immediate ceasefire as permission to pursue an onslaught on Lebanon aimed at crippling Hizbollah guerrillas who sparked the conflict by seizing two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid on July 12. Hizbollah has kept up rocket strikes on northern Israel and fought Israeli ground incursions, especially near the southern town of Bint Jbeil and the village of Maroun al-Ras, where sporadic fighting continued on Friday. An Israeli military source said the army believed it had killed at least 200 Hizbollah fighters in the conflict. The Shi'ite guerrillas have acknowledged only 31 dead. Since the beginning of the crisis in the region at least 456 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. jrs/

ITN Source | July 28, 2006

Tags:. .across. .taken. .hills. .region. .least