Hezbollah rains rockets as Israel presses offensive
Barrage is largest of conflict
SAFED, Israel -- Hezbollah guerrillas launched more than 230 rockets into northern Israel yesterday, a record number that scorched fields, damaged homes, and killed a Newton-born kibbutz resident.
Thousands of Israeli troops backed by tanks pressed a broad offensive against Hezbollah fighters in southern Lebanon, and a senior general predicted that the army's first goal in the three-week campaign -- clearing Hezbollah from a 3- or 4-mile buffer zone near the border -- would be achieved by this morning.
The Hezbollah rocket barrage was by far the largest in one day since the conflict began July 12, and included one rocket that exploded near Beit She'an, 45 miles from the border -- the deepest penetration by a Hezbollah rocket so far.
Another relatively long-range rocket overshot the Israeli city of Afula and exploded in the West Bank near the Palestinian city of Jenin, about 32 miles south of the border. Both rockets fell into agricultural areas and caused no injuries.
Former Newton resident David Lelchook, 52, who moved to Israel more than 20 years ago, was killed while riding his bicycle at Kibbutz Saar, near Nahariya in the northwest corner of Israel.
About 20 other Israeli civilians were injured, one gravely, in other rocket attacks. One Israeli soldier was killed and eight were wounded in fighting in southern Lebanon.
Israel resumed its barrage from the air yesterday and today. Among the targets this morning were Hezbollah strongholds in Beirut's outskirts and in the eastern Bekaa Valley. Witnesses said at least four explosions reverberated through Beirut as missiles hit Dahieh, a Shi'ite suburb that is home to a Hezbollah compound and that has been repeatedly shelled by Israel.
It was the first air raid against the Lebanese capital's suburb in almost a week.
New details emerged about Israel's daring airborne raid late Tuesday in the northeastern Lebanon town of Baalbek.
Commando units killed 19 Hezbollah fighters and captured five others in the militant stronghold, Brigadier General Ido Nehushtan said at a briefing in Tel Aviv last night.
He said the raid targeted a wing of a Baalbek hospital that Israel had identified as a Hezbollah headquarters, and several other locations in the city's suburbs. Nehushtan said there were no patients in the hospital.
Lebanese radio reported that 16 civilians were killed in the fighting.
A spokeswoman for the Israel Defense Forces said at least 10 additional Hezbollah fighters were believed killed as fierce fighting continued along the border yesterday. After the massive Hezbollah barrage, she said, Israeli warplanes destroyed the rocket launchers.
Israeli military sources say that more than 300 Hezbollah fighters have been killed in the conflict, and that 37 Israeli soldiers have died. Hezbollah leaders say only a handful of their fighters have been killed, and that Israeli casualties are much higher than Israel says.
In Tyre, a southern Lebanon coastal city that has escaped heavy Israeli bombing so far, the crack of outgoing Hezbollah rockets echoed throughout the day.
Municipal workers, fearing Israeli reprisals, suspended a mass burial of 45 people yesterday afternoon after Hezbollah fired several rockets from Tyre's suburbs, closer to the populated city center than previously during the conflict.
Later in the day, Hezbollah fired six rockets from a field north of the city, leaving white plumes arcing in the sky.
Sheik Ahmed Murad, Hezbollah's spokesman for southern Lebanon, said Israeli airstrikes had not diminished the Shi'ite group's military strength.
``Hezbollah is defending its people," said Murad, standing between two stacks of hastily assembled pine coffins for the dead retrieved from nearby villages during the previous week. ``We will resist the invaders even if we can get killed in this miserable way."
He said Hezbollah was willing to accept any cease-fire negotiated by the Shi'ite speaker of parliament, Nabih Berri, who is close to Hezbollah but the leader of another party, called Amal. ``We pray to God this war will end as quickly as possible," Murad said.
At the United Nations, diplomats acknowledged yesterday that any UN Security Council resolution to stop fighting in Lebanon could take until next week, as the United States and France struggled to bridge wide differences on what to do first: send in peacekeepers to disarm Hezbollah or impose a cease-fire.
Israel's prime minister, Ehud Olmert, said Israeli troops would stay in southern Lebanon and target Hezbollah until an international stabilization force is put in place.
``We can't stop before because if there will not be a presence of a very effective and robust international military force, Hezbollah will be there and we will have achieved nothing," Olmert told reporters.
He and military leaders said that Hezbollah has been hurt badly by the fighting, and that despite the barrage yesterday they were close to ending the guerrillas' ability to fire large numbers of rockets into Israel.
Nehushtan would not make a numerical estimate of how much Hezbollah's military capacity has been diminished, but, he said, ``We've destroyed a great amount of their long-range missiles."
Longer-range rockets are easier to destroy than short-range weapons because the launchers are bigger, usually on trucks, whereas short-range rockets are launched with just ``a tube on a tripod with a timer," he said.
As the army pushes Hezbollah farther north, Israel will be out of reach of the short-range rockets, he said. On the Israeli side of the border, outgoing artillery fire and incoming rockets reverberated throughout the day, and at dusk flashes of exploding rockets lit northern valleys.
Roads and guardrails along border highways were chewed up by the treads of heavy tanks and armored personnel carriers.
About 30,000 reserve soldiers are on standby to go into Lebanon if needed to reinforce the 8,000 to 10,000 regular troops who have seen most of the action.
A 74-year-old woman sitting at a bus stop in the town of Safed was gravely injured when a rocket exploded behind her, scattering jagged pieces of metal. She was rushed to the local hospital with a deep gash in her neck and then transferred to Rambam Hospital in Haifa in critical condition.
In Nahariya, a mother and her three children were rescued unharmed from their blazing house after it took a direct hit. Officials said the four were saved because they had taken shelter in a reinforced security room inside the house.
Hundreds of Israeli reservists began pouring across the border into southern Lebanon to back up elite brigades clearing the buffer zone.
They were supported by
Yusuf, a Bedouin scout for the IDF on his way back from battle, said the army was finding and destroying ``unbelievable hiding places" along the border.
``They had pits 7 or 8 yards deep into tunnels leading to bunkers," he said. ``The pits have fiberglass covers made to look like the terrain. They push up the cover and surprise you. They are talented and creative."
Thanassis Cambanis of the Globe staff contributed from Tyre. Also contributing were correspondents Alon Tuval, from the border region, and Rafael D. Frankel, from Tel Aviv. Material from the Associated Press was also included. 
