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200 elite troops in Baalbek raid
Daily Telegraph ^ | August 03, 2006 12:00 | From correspondents in Jerusalem - Agence France-Presse

Posted on 08/02/2006 2:17:11 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach

A FORCE of 200 elite troops took part in Israel's spectacular raid deep inside Lebanese territory last night during which five Hezbollah suspects were nabbed, Israeli media reported today.

The helicopter raid in the town of Baalbek in east Lebanon, some 100 kilometres north of Israel's border, was the most northern ground attack by Israeli forces since the start of the crisis on July 12.

It also marked the fifteenth special operation carried out since the start of the war, army radio reported.

According to the report, the 200-men airborne force under the command of Colonel Nitsan Alon, former commander of the army's elite special force, was transported on several helicopters to the Baalbek outskirts.

Upon arriving, the force split into two groups.

The first went for the main objective of the operation - a Hezbollah-run hospital outside Baalbek - where they engaged in a heavy gun battle in which at least 11 people were killed before entering the hospital to snatch the five wanted men.

The second force moved into the heart of the town, where it also opened a gunbattle with Hezbollah men, backed by air force fire. Three vehicles believed to be carrying Hezbollah guerillas were hit in the battle.

The force returned home safely in just over four hours, at 11am (AEST).

The force also seized a large number of documents, computers, data disks, maps and radio communication equipment, army radio reported.

Lebanese police said that 11 civilians, including a Syrian national, were killed and five Lebanese were captured during the overnight raid on the eastern town, a Hezbollah bastion 10km from the Syrian border.

Hezbollah said the captured Lebanese are "ordinary citizens" and not militants.

"The Islamic Resistance confirms that the citizens kidnapped in Baalbek are normal civilians," Hezbollah's television station Al-Manar said.

"The Islamic Resistance announces that it has foiled an Israeli landing operation in Baalbek and denies that the enemy had captured any of its members," it said.


TOPICS: Extended News; Foreign Affairs; Israel; News/Current Events; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: 2006israelwar; baalbek; idf
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To: Mr.Smorch

Reach out and touch someone....


21 posted on 08/02/2006 3:48:55 PM PDT by LtKerst (Lt Kerst)
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach

In sharp contrast to Jimmuh's raid on iran many years ago. Israelis get it done right!


22 posted on 08/02/2006 4:02:07 PM PDT by gotribe (It's not a religion.)
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To: BurbankKarl
They showed all the spent shoulder fired rocket cases with Israeli writing on the ground.

"Okay, Achmed, so the "they're all civilians" routine isn't working as well as it used to. We'll accuse the Israelis of something that'll really get those leftist reporters outraged... littering".

Watch you local paper for angry letters from the Sierra Club.

23 posted on 08/02/2006 4:03:23 PM PDT by ArmstedFragg
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach
A special elite mission calls for a Bibi post.

Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting

24 posted on 08/02/2006 4:03:45 PM PDT by mware
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To: mware
Bibi should have been running the show from the beginning!

Another article:

17 die as commandos hunt missing soldiers

The media is totally cracked....

25 posted on 08/02/2006 4:28:12 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach (History is soon Forgotten,)
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach

I found a video of Green Helmet guy from 1996.
Be warned it is very graphic. Green Helmet guy is hold a decapitated infant in his hands.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/quana_01_19_03.htm


26 posted on 08/02/2006 4:30:01 PM PDT by mware
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To: All
I think we need to capture all of this report.

***********************************************

The Times

August 03, 2006

17 die as commandos hunt missing soldiers

From Daniel McGrory in Baalbek
ISRAELI commandos staged an audacious raid on a suspected Hezbollah hideout near Baalbek to rescue one of their kidnapped soldiers who they believed was being treated at a hospital used by some of the militia’s leaders as a makeshift headquarters.

A dozen figures, their faces masked, ran through the darkened wards of the Dar al- Hekma hospital shouting the name of one of the men whose abduction on July 12 triggered the war. The commandos used shotguns to blast open locked doors, witnesses told The Times yesterday.

Other units were dropped by helicopter at three more sites in an operation to capture one of Israel’s most wanted men, the Hezbollah military commander in the Bekaa Valley.

The Israeli Defence Forces claim that they seized five “significant figures” from the Shia militia. Hezbollah and locals insist that they they got the wrong men.

Whatever the success of the mission, this was the farthest the Israelis have ventured into Lebanon, with airborne units hitting targets around Baalbek, a Hezbollah stronghold 60 miles (96km) northeast of Beirut.

The operation began just after 10.30pm on Tuesday with a ferocious aerial bombardment severing a number of roads that led to suspected Hezbollah safe houses.

Minutes later Apache helicopters could be heard flying low over outlying villages such as al-Jamaliyeh, targeting a number of cars, and at least two houses, as rocket fire lit up the night sky.

Awad Mouri says that he saw two helicopters land in a parched field yards from the modern hospital that is run by an Iranian charity. One group of commandos charged towards the glass-fronted main entrance firing shoulder-held rocket launchers, while another skirted the compound, climbed over a low wall and shot their way through a back door, hurling in stun grenades.

Mr Mouri, 42, a caretaker, said that Israeli forces systematically searched every room, taking away a number of documents. “They were clearly looking for something specific,” he said, adding that the hospital had been evacuated earlier in the week. Upstairs in the CT scan room and two adjoining offices there was evidence that a number of people had been sleeping rough.

Two bombed-out vehicles in the car park were still smouldering 12 hours after the attack. The ground was littered with empty shell casings from Israeli assault rifles, evidence of what locals say was a five-hour gunfight.

A hundred yards from the hospital a bomb has punched a hole in the roof of a home, killing the five people inside. They were believed to be Hezbollah gunmen who ambushed the Israeli commandos as they retreated. Three Hezbollah supporters yesterday scooped up the hardware left behind.

Another target was the home of the mayor of al-Jamaliyeh, Hussein Jamaleddin. His Ali, 17, and brother, Awad, 60, were killed along with three relatives. Mr Jamaleddin denied that his family were linked to Hezbollah, as he helped to load the corpses into the shovel of a mechanical digger for the short journey to the cemetery.

Seventeen villagers died, but none was on Israel’s “death list” of Hezbollah commanders. Their main target was Hassan Nasrallah, who shares a name with, but is no relation to, the leader of Hezbollah. He controls the east of Lebanon.

One of the five men taken away by Israeli troops has that name, but local people insist that the man owns a grocery shop and is a cousin of the military commander. The man’s 17-year-old son, Bilal, and three other relatives were also flown across the border for interrogation. The Israeli army has yet to reveal their identities.

The commandos reportedly freed one captive — the 13-year-old son of the man that the Israelis believe is Hezbollah’s military chief — as they boarded their helicopters.

Another intended target was Sheikh Muhammad Yazbek, a member of Hezbollah’s ruling council. Walid Ahmez returned to the mangled wreckage of his Mercedes car which he says is the same make, model and colour as Sheikh Yazbek’s vehicle. Mr Ahmez jumped from his car moments before a rocket tore it apart.

Meanwhile, the victims of Sunday’s Israeli air strike on Qana village, just south of Tyre, were buried yesterday as part of Lebanon’s third mass burial since the conflict began.


27 posted on 08/02/2006 4:31:04 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach (History is soon Forgotten,)
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To: All
The commandos used shotguns to blast open locked doors, witnesses told The Times yesterday.

SHOTGUNS....how terrible!

28 posted on 08/02/2006 4:34:26 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach (History is soon Forgotten,)
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To: mware

i just ate.....maybe later....see above for another report....and the soldiers used shotguns .... too!


29 posted on 08/02/2006 4:36:24 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach (History is soon Forgotten,)
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To: mware
"A special elite mission calls for a Bibi post."

I think his brother was the only Israeli troop killed during the Entebbe raid.

30 posted on 08/02/2006 4:39:33 PM PDT by blam
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To: blam
You are correct his brother was the only fatality during Entebbe raid.

I think, but am not sure he was the CO of the operation.

31 posted on 08/02/2006 4:41:50 PM PDT by mware
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach

The real news in real time. The Belmont Club called it as it was happening. Best source on the Net. Forget everything else but FOX for updates.

http://fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com/2006/08/world-as-lebanon.html


32 posted on 08/02/2006 4:43:07 PM PDT by Frank Sheed (Tá brón orainn. Níl Spáinnis againn anseo.)
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To: BIGLOOK

There will be some interesting raids after new the hard disks, photos and other data enters the process.


33 posted on 08/02/2006 5:16:15 PM PDT by Grampa Dave (There's a dwindling market for Marxist Homosexual Lunatic wet dreams posing as journalism)
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To: mware
"I think, but am not sure he was the CO of the operation."

I think he was too.

34 posted on 08/02/2006 5:18:23 PM PDT by blam
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach

Excellent work. Just excellent.

bttt!


35 posted on 08/02/2006 6:32:37 PM PDT by prairiebreeze (I am a proud friend of Israel. We're all Jews now.)
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To: blasater1960; Grampa Dave; Marine_Uncle; BurbankKarl; blam; SJackson
Details in this CNN report:

Israel resumes airstrikes on Beirut

****************************************

Subtitle and excerpt:

******************

Israel's military released video Wednesday that it said proved the Baalbeck hospital was a Hezbollah headquarters.

**********************************

Israeli video of the scene appeared to show weapons that Israeli soldiers discovered during a search of the hospital, located about 70 miles north of the Israeli border. ()

"The IDF and the air force demonstrated their long arm, their ability to reach everywhere that Hezbollah sees fit to situate itself, even if it chooses a hospital as its headquarters," said Israeli Brig. Gen. Yohanan Loker.

Other images showed Israeli commandos rifling through file cabinets in an office inside the hospital, where the IDF said it found ammunition and weapons. ()

Video at the site linked above.

36 posted on 08/02/2006 7:10:47 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach (History is soon Forgotten,)
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To: BurbankKarl

The IDF done a shock and awe upside their heads


37 posted on 08/02/2006 7:31:42 PM PDT by dennisw (Confucius say man who go through turnstile sideways going to Bangkok)
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach

Thanks for ping. Sounds as if the elite Israeli troops are going to find a lot of stuff that will displayed in the future if to many goof nations continue to give Israel a hard time.


38 posted on 08/03/2006 4:26:48 PM PDT by Marine_Uncle (Honor must be earned)
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