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Defiant Nasrallah vows more strikes

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Written by News Editor

Saturday, 29 July 2006

Hezbollah's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, has vowed to rain down more rockets on Israel and said that Condoleeza Rice's visit to the region aimed to "impose conditions that serve Israel".

"Many cities in the centre (of Israel) will be targeted beyond Haifa if the savage aggression continues on our country, people and villages," said the leader of the Shia armed group in a televised speech on Saturday.

The threat came after Hezbollah's rockets reached the Israeli city of Afula, 50 kilometres south of the border earlier on Saturday - the deepest strike into Israel since the conflict began 18 days ago.

"The bombardment of Afula and its military base is the beginning," Nasrallah said an address broadcast on Hezbollah's satellite channel Al-Manar.

Commenting on the US secretary of state's arrival in the region to broker an end to the showdown, Nasrallah said: "Rice returns to the region to impose conditions that serve Israel."

His comments came as Israel pressed ahead with its massive air and ground assault on Lebanon aimed at securing the release of two troops captured by Hezbollah in a July 12 cross-border raid.

Children killed

A new wave of air strikes on Saturday killed at least 12 civilians, including children, in southern Lebanon.

More than 450 Lebanese have now been killed in the Israeli offensives, most of them civilians. The UN relief chief, Jan Egeland, had earlier appealed for a truce to allow casualties to be removed and food and medicine to be dispatched to war zones, saying one third of the casualties in the conflict were children.

"Rice returns to the region to impose conditions that serve Israel"

Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah's leader

"There is something fundamentally wrong with a war where there are more dead children than armed men. That has to stop," he said, quoting Lebanese figures that put the death toll at 600. But the Israeli government spokesman, Avi Pazner, said: "There is no need for a 72-hour temporary ceasefire because Israel has opened a humanitarian corridor to and from Lebanon." And Gideon Meir, an official with the Israeli foreign ministry, added: "We cannot accept a ceasefire with Hezbollah because this terrorist organisation would exploit it to gather civilians to use them as a human shield in the combat zone." Aid groups have complained they have little access to south Lebanon which has borne the brunt of the Israeli onslaught. Rice in Jerusalem

Meanwhile, the US secretary of state, Condoleeza Rice, landed in Jerusalem on Saturday afternoon for the second time in less than a week.

"There is something fundamentally wrong with a war where there are more dead children than armed men. That has to stop"

Jan Egeland, UN relief chief

Ahead of her arrival, she said she was expecting a "fairly intense" round of talks with "give and take" on both sides, but that she was encouraged by some progress.

"We are not setting a deadline, but obviously as we want an early end to the violence it is important that we get agreement on the elements," said Rice.

"I think there are a lot of elements that are coming together." It was not immediately known if she would visit Beirut as she did last Monday. Israeli withdrawal

Israel, which is facing tougher than expected resistance from Hezbollah, said on Saturday that it had pulled its forces back from the key Lebanese border town of Bint Jbeil, a Hezbollah stronghold.

But Israeli troops in the nearby Lebanese village of Marun Al-Ras continued to bombard Bint Jbeil as well as Aitarun and Ainata with over 350 rockets, Lebanese police said.

Israel also pounded a launch pad it suspected was used to fire a new type of missile that hit Afula.

The pullback took place amid clashes which the Israeli military said left six Israeli soldiers wounded, including one in a serious condition.

Israel lost nine soldiers in fighting around Bint Jbeil and a neighbouring village in its biggest single-day death toll of the conflict on Wednesday.

UN resolution The US president, George W. Bush, said that during her mission, Rice would "work with Israel and Lebanon to come up with an acceptable UN Security Council resolution that we can table next week". Bush and his staunchest ally, the British prime minister, Tony Blair, held talks in Washington on a plan to end the crisis, isolate Hezbollah and its backers Iran and Syria, and set the stage for a long-term solution.

"We cannot accept a ceasefire with Hezbollah because this terrorist organisation would exploit it to gather civilians to use them as a human shield in the combat zone"

Gideon Meir, Israeli foreign ministry official

Blair said world powers would meet at UN headquarters Monday to discuss the possible deployment of a multinational force to stabilise Lebanon. But despite pledging aid for Lebanon, they again refused to call for an immediate ceasefire to stop Israel's offensive which has wreaked a trail of destruction and left much of the country's infrastructure in tatters.

The two leaders also warned Israel's archfoes Syria and Iran that they must become "proper and responsible members of the international community" or face "the risk of increasing confrontation".

Aljazeera + Agencies

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