Tuesday August 01, 2006 7:28pm
BEIRUT, Lebanon (AP) - Israel launched a major attack deep into Lebanon, and Hezbollah said its guerrillas were fighting Israeli commandos trapped inside a hospital in the eastern city of Baalbek early Wednesday. The Israeli army would not comment on the operation in the ancient city, which was once a Syrian army headquarters some 80 miles north of Israel. The Web site of the Israeli daily Haaretz reported that "helicopters put down IDF (military) commandos near Baalbek," without adding details.
The ferocity of the battles in Baalbek and across southern Lebanon on Tuesday, the determination of the Israelis to keep fighting and the minimal diplomatic progress toward a cease-fire all indicate the war is more likely to escalate than end soon.
Hezbollah's chief spokesman, Hussein Rahal, told The Associated Press that Israeli troops landed near Dar al-Hikma Hospital and that fierce fighting was raging after more than one hour.
"A group of Israeli commandos was brought to the hospital by a helicopter. They entered the hospital and are trapped inside as our fighters opened fire on them, and fierce fighting is still raging," Rahal said.
Rahal said Hezbollah was using automatic rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, and that Israeli jets were attacking the surrounding guerrilla force with rockets.
He dismissed as "untrue" reports that the Israeli commandos managed to snatch some patients from the hospital and spirit them away in helicopters. Hezbollah's capture of two Israeli soldiers in a July 12 cross-border raid triggered the ongoing Israeli offensive in Lebanon.
Witnesses said the hospital was hit in an Israeli airstrike and was burning. Repeated telephone calls to the hospital went unanswered.
Baalbek is a city with spectacular Roman ruins as well as the barracks of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards when they trained Hezbollah guerrillas there in the 1980s.
The last time Israel forces were known to have gone that far on the ground into Lebanon was in 1994, when they abducted Lebanese guerrilla leader Mustafa Dirani, hoping to use him to get information about missing Israeli airman Ron Arad. Dirani was released in a prisoner exchange 10 years later.
I love this article. It makes it sound like it is reporting what an Israeli publication is reporting. Which it is. But what it doesn't tell you is that the Israeli publication is quoting a Lebonese source. This is so misleading!