From the Zionist-controlled perspective of the New York Times.
No highlighting needed since even the New York Times can't cover up Israel's war crime!!!
A day in a month:
"Israel Widens Scope of Attacks Across Lebanon" by GREG MYRE New York Times July 17, 2006
METULA, Israel, Sunday, July 16 — Expanding the reach of its airstrikes, Israel on Saturday hit coastal radar installations in northern Lebanon that it said were targeting its warships and early Sunday bombed the southern suburbs of Beirut.
Israel also struck roads in Lebanon’s north and east on Saturday, with one attack killing at least 16 civilians, most of them children. At the same time, Hezbollah forces continued their rocket barrage into northern Israel, striking the resort city of Tiberias for the first time.
The widening conflict stirred a meeting of world leaders in Russia, where President Bush called on Syria to use its influence with Hezbollah to end the fighting. At an emergency meeting of Arab foreign ministers in Cairo, the Arab League secretary general, Amr Moussa, said the participants “all decided that the peace process has failed,” and that they would turn to the United Nations Security Council for help.
Israel carried out dozens of airstrikes on Saturday, hitting Jounieh, Tripoli and other northern ports.
A Lebanese civilian convoy was hit near the coastal town of Tyre after fleeing the border village of Marwaheen, resulting in 16 deaths. The Israeli military said the area was a target because Hezbollah had used it to launch missiles, and regretted any civilian casualties. It was the deadliest single attack in the past four days of fighting.
The villagers left after the Israeli military told them to evacuate over a loudspeaker, Reuters reported.
Israeli aircraft also fired a missile at the new lighthouse in the seafront Manara district near downtown Beirut, the first time this part of the city was struck.
An Israeli commander, Brig. Gen. Ido Nehushtan, said the new strikes at Lebanese port areas were meant to take out sea radar installations that were instrumental in the attack on Friday that heavily damaged an Israeli ship, killing one sailor. Three others are missing. The ship returned to Israel on Saturday.
The Israeli military said Saturday that the ship had been struck by a radar-guided C802 missile supplied by Iran, not by a drone aircraft, as previously reported.
General Nehushtan said the missile, which was fired from the Lebanese coast, was part of a system that required direct training from Iran. “We see this attack as a very clear fingerprint of Iranian involvement,” he said.
Dozens of Iranian fighters are in Lebanon, and they have been working with Hezbollah for more than two decades, the military says. Iran provides a large part of the group’s financing and weaponry.
He described Saturday’s bombing as a continuation of a strategy to close off routes that Hezbollah could use to bring in weapons. “Sometimes new targets come up, like the sea radar, that we will go after,” he said.
Early Sunday, Israeli warplanes bombed the Beirut suburbs for hours.
[Israeli forces moved back into the northern Gaza Strip on Sunday, Reuters reported. Tanks and armored vehicles, backed by helicopters, moved in darkness into farmland near Beit Hanoun, an area often used by militants for launching rockets.
[Three gunmen were killed in an Israeli air strike, and at least 10 other men were wounded in that and other air attacks, Israeli military officials said. The army said it opened fire on a group of men spotted carrying an anti-tank grenade launcher.]
Meanwhile, many residents on both sides of the Israel-Lebanon border have been fleeing the frontier to avoid the heavy shooting. The fighting erupted Wednesday with a Hezbollah attack that led to the capture of two Israeli soldiers. Nine Israeli soldiers have been killed in the fighting.
Hezbollah unleashed about 100 Katyusha rockets deep into northern Israel on Saturday, striking Tiberias. Several buildings were hit and damaged, and there were some minor injuries, Israeli officials said. Sunbathers scrambled for cover after the attacks, and the town, which had been full of activity, quickly fell quiet and the streets became deserted.Explosions rocked the skyline as warplanes again targeted a building attached to Hezbollah’s headquarters, in the Haret Hreik neighborhood. The complex had already been mostly destroyed in a bombing on Friday, and afterward, Hezbollah’s leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, declared an “open war” against Israel.
The Israeli television station Channel 2 reported early Sunday that Sheik Nasrallah had been injured in an Israeli airstrike during a raid on Beirut. The Israeli Army said it could not confirm the report.
Israeli warplanes pounded roads in the south, destroying bridges and arteries, dividing large parts of the country from each other.
Warplanes also bombed roads in the north and east, cutting off some of the last remaining routes out of Lebanon and striking closer to the border with Syria. The Israeli military said the strikes were a further warning to Syria, which supports both Hezbollah and Hamas, though no Syrian sites were hit. Three civilians were reported killed in one of the strikes, on the main highway between Beirut and Damascus.
Some 30 Lebanese were killed in various attacks through the day. Over the past four days, more than 85 Lebanese have died, most of them civilians, and more than 200 have been wounded, according to Lebanese officials. Hezbollah rockets have killed four Israeli civilians and wounded more than 150 since the barrage began Wednesday.
Despite talks at the United Nations, the Group of 8 leaders meeting in St. Petersburg, Russia, and the Arab League session in Cairo, there were no signs of diplomatic progress. President Bush took his toughest line yet with Syria and Hezbollah during a joint appearance with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir V. Putin, in a suburb outside St. Petersburg, where they were preparing for the Group of 8 meeting. In a break from his past statements, he did not call upon Israel to show restraint.
“In my judgment, the best way to stop the violence is to understand why the violence occurred in the first place,” Mr. Bush said. “And that’s because Hezbollah has been launching rocket attacks out of Lebanon into Israel, and because Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers. That’s why we have violence.”
Singling out Syria for its support of Hezbollah, he called upon its leadership to intercede to stop the violence. “The best way to stop the violence is for Hezbollah to lay down its arms, and to stop attacking,” Mr. Bush said. “And, therefore, I call upon Syria to exert influence over Hezbollah.”
Later, Stephen J. Hadley, Mr. Bush’s national security adviser, elaborated by saying that it now fell to both Syria and Iran to step in and persuade Hezbollah to stand down. Mr. Putin said it was unacceptable for Hezbollah to try to achieve its goals using force and abductions, but he was also critical of Israel’s response. “The use of force should be balanced,” The Associated Press quoted him as saying. “And, in any case, bloodshed should stop as soon as possible.”
Israeli leaders have warned that the battle could be a long one, and say that Israel will not accept a return to the conditions that existed before the fighting started, with Hezbollah and not the Lebanese Army controlling Lebanon’s southern border with Israel. “We can’t go back to the status quo,” said Mark Regev, a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry. “That would mean that Hezbollah still has its finger on the trigger and can start a regional crisis whenever that serves its interest.”
The military goal is to push Hezbollah from the border so it cannot strike at Israel, Mr. Regev said. The political goal, he said, is to carry out a United Nations Security Council resolution, passed two years ago, that calls for the Lebanese government to take control of its southern border and disarm militias like Hezbollah.
Italy began evacuating its citizens from Lebanon on Saturday while the United States and France prepared to do the same, Reuters reported. About 410 people left Beirut in an Italian convoy early Saturday, the Italian Foreign Ministry said. The group was mostly made up of Italians and other Europeans, who were expected to arrive in the Syrian port city of Latakia in the coming hours.A British ship was reported en route to Lebanon to help with evacuation.
The United States State Department said it was working with the Defense Department on a plan to take Americans to Cyprus, from where it recommended they return to the United States by commercial airlines. The State Department estimates that about 25,000 American citizens, including people with dual citizenship, live in Lebanon, although summer visits could expand that number.
The Lebanese government has demanded an end to the Israeli air, naval and artillery strikes on Lebanon. The government has also disavowed the cross-border raid by Hezbollah that ignited the fighting. But the Lebanese leadership has said and done little as the crisis has expanded, and the government has not given any indication that it will act against Hezbollah, even as the group continued its strikes into northern Israel.
Most northern Israeli cities are now ghost towns, with residents having fled south, taking refuge in bomb shelters or simply remaining inside their homes.
Israeli security officials have said for some time that Hezbollah had longer-range rockets, but the recent attacks have still alarmed many Israelis.
Tiberias, on the Sea of Galilee, is about 20 miles south of the Lebanese border, and no Hezbollah rockets had landed near the town. However, Hezbollah demonstrated its increased range when on Thursday it struck the Mediterranean port city of Haifa, which is also around 20 miles from the border. Hezbollah has denied that it targeted Haifa.
Several Katyusha rockets scored direct hits on empty buildings on Saturday. In Hatzor Haglilit, a small hillside community surrounded by pine trees, a rocket crashed through the roof of a home and damaged the living home, but the residents had gone to Tel Aviv, neighbors said.
Before this week, the last time the community was shelled was in the 1960’s by Syrian forces in the Golan Heights, according to the mayor, Shaul Kamisa. Israel captured the heights from Syria in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
One Israeli man, Rafi Cohen, traveled north to show solidarity with people in the coastal town of Nahariya, which has been hit hard. But when he showed up at the beach, which is usually crowded on Saturdays during the summer, he found himself alone, and a bit surprised.
“We should show Hezbollah how strong we are and live our lives as normal,” Mr. Cohen told Israel radio.
In the Gaza Strip, meanwhile, the Israeli Air Force bombed Gaza City, hitting the Palestinian Ministry of National Economy and a factory suspected of making rockets.
Palestinians said one man was killed and about a dozen wounded in the attack on the factory, which was in a residential area of Gaza City, Palestinians said. Hamas militants quickly took control of the bomb site, where there was a deep crater.
Palestinian militants also fired rockets into southern Israel on Saturday, but they did not cause damage or injuries."
