Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul-Gheit slams G8 statement on Israeli offensive
BEIRUT: Lebanon shuddered under a new wave of deadly Israeli air raids Monday, as Hezbollah militants struck the Israeli city of Haifa with rockets for the second time in as many days. As the death toll climbed to 200 less than a week into a fierce flare-up of violence, world leaders scrambled to head off an all-out Middle East war. At least 31 people, including Lebanese soldiers, were killed as fighter jets slammed missiles into the port of Beirut, a military base in the northern city of Tripoli, and Baalbek, a Hezbollah stronghold in the east.
An Israeli army spokesman said some soldiers crossed the border overnight to destroy Hezbollah positions and returned to Israel. There was a very small incursion overnight to destroy a few Hezbollah positions … That has been done, he said. Lebanese televisions stations showed burning debris falling over Beirut and said an Israeli plane had been shot down. Israel s Defense Minister Amir Peretz said no jet or helicopter had been lost but an unmanned drone may have been downed.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul-Gheit deplored what he said was a weak G8 statement on Israel s devastating military offensive against Lebanon, the official MENA news agency reported Monday. The final statement adopted by the G8 leaders concerning Lebanon lacks in strength, Abul-Gheit was quoted as telling public television.
The immediate crisis results from efforts by extremist forces to destabilize the region and to frustrate the aspirations of the Palestinian, Israeli and Lebanese people for democracy and peace, the G8 statement said. Arab countries have slammed Israel s reaction to the Hezbollah abductions as disproportionate and condemned the civilian deaths caused by Israel s relentless air raids on Lebanon.
Meanwhile six people were injured, one seriously, when a Hezbollah rocket ploughed into a four-storey apartment building in Haifa, one day after eight railway workers were killed in the first such deadly attack in Israel s third largest city. Leaders gathered at the Group of Eight summit in Russia worked on organizing a substantial international force for Lebanon in an attempt to quickly snuff out a conflict that has exposed deep rifts in the international community. British Prime Minister Tony Blair said the stabilization force should be much larger than the 2,000-strong UN observer mission already deployed in south Lebanon. The mission will have to be far more specific and clearer, and the force employed will have to be far greater, he said. Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki of Iran, one of Hezbollah s main backers along with Syria, waded into the hostilities by proposing a ceasefire and an exchange of prisoners between Israel and Arab militants. We need to reflect in a reasonable and just manner so that we can put an end to the crisis, Mottaki said after talks with Syrian Vice President Faruq Al-Shara. UN envoys were also in the region holding urgent talks to try to contain the crisis amid fears it could spiral out of control. They said they had achieved some promising first efforts to end hostilities. I appeal to the parties to focus their targets narrowly and to bear in mind that they have an obligation under international humanitarian law to spare civilian lives (and) to spare civilian infrastructure, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said at the G8 summit. Monday s raids brought to at least 176 the number killed in Israel s fiercest offensive on its northern neighbor since it launched a full-scale invasion in 1982. Almost all have been civilians. Twenty-four Israelis have been killed, including 12 civilians in a barrage of Hezbollah rocket fire across the border. On Monday, rockets reached deep into Israel as far as the Arab towns of Afula and Nazareth. The onslaught has left Lebanon virtually cut off from the outside world and much of its infrastructure in tatters, with jets hitting roads, bridges and power stations as well as Hezbollah strongholds. Beirut s international airport, already shut to traffic since last Thursday, was hit again late Sunday by Israeli warplanes, which fired 10 missiles on a runway and set the night sky ablaze. The Israeli military ordered residents to flee villages in southern Lebanon, warning of air and artillery operations, and put its commercial capital Tel Aviv and all towns further north on alert. Israel unleashed its military might on Lebanon after the capture of two soldiers in a Hezbollah attack that also killed eight soldiers, opening up another battleground after a similar offensive launched three weeks ago against Gaza where militants are holding a third soldier hostage. We will use all means, a defiant Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah warned in an address on Lebanese television. As long as the enemy has no limits, we will have no limits. Foreign governments raced to send in boats and military helicopters to evacuate their nationals from Lebanon, cut off by an Israeli air and sea blockade on the sixth day of the conflict. Wiping away tears and hugging loved ones they were leaving behind, hundreds of foreigners were fleeing Lebanon, packed into buses to head across the border into Syria or waiting to be shipped or airlifted out by their government. Prime Minister Fuad Siniora has declared Lebanon a disaster zone and appealed for urgent international help for a country that was slowly rebuilding after a devastating 15-year civil war. But diplomatic efforts finally began to gain momentum with a UN mission in Beirut for talks with Siniora on a possible ceasefire following a visit by EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she is considering traveling to the region, while French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin is also heading to Beirut to express solidarity with the Lebanese people. US President George W. Bush was meanwhile caught on an open microphone at the G8 summit expressing his frustration with the situation. Chatting with Blair over lunch, he said that the irony is, what they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this sh–, and it s over, without specifying who they are. The United States has maintained Israel has every right to defend itself and also urged restraint over the offensive, which split the international community and raised fears of dragging Syria and Iran into the conflict. But the leaders of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States presented a united front in urging all parties to halt violence in a statement issued at their summit. The extremists must immediately halt their attacks. Those extremist elements and those that support them cannot be allowed to plunge the Middle East into chaos and provoke a wider conflict. Urging Israel to exercise utmost restraint, it demanded an end to Israeli military operations and the early withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza. Israel says the aim of its operation is to destroy Hezbollah, which was instrumental in its withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000 after a long and bloody occupation. Agencies
