JUST IN: ISRAEL SAYS 15 ISRAELI TROOPS KILLED IN LEBANON; highest single one-day total since fighting began
15 Israeli troops killed in Lebanon; White House warns on expanding war
MSNBC News Services
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Updated: 2:45 p.m. MT Aug 9, 2006
JERUSALEM - Overriding U.S. opposition to an escalation of Mideast fighting, Israel’s Security Cabinet overwhelmingly decided Wednesday to send troops deeper into Lebanon in a major expansion of the ground war — an attempt to further damage Hezbollah and score quick battlefield victories before a cease-fire is imposed.
Meanwhile, the Israeli military said that 15 Israeli soldiers were killed in a single day of fighting Wednesday, the highest one-day total in the Israel-Hezbollah conflict.
The military said 38 soldiers were wounded in battles across south Lebanon. Israel TV said some of the dead and wounded were reservists, and the others were from the standing army. Many of the details, including the names of the dead soldiers, were not immediately released.
Earlier, Arab broadcaster Al-Jazeera reported 11 Israeli soldiers had been killed.
Official: Offensive won't start for days
A government minister who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to give details, said the offensive would not begin for two or three days so as not interfere with efforts to broker a cease-fire at the United Nations. However, senior military officials said it would start far quicker than that.
Soon after the Cabinet voted 9-0 with three abstentions, a column of Israeli tanks and armored vehicles crossed into southern Lebanon and took up positions.
The Cabinet decision was risky. Israel could set itself up for new criticism that it is sabotaging diplomatic efforts, particularly after Lebanon offered to deploy its own troops in the border area.
A wider ground offensive also might do little to stop Hezbollah rocket fire on Israel, while sharply increasing the already-high number of casualties among Israeli troops.
Since the fighting began, at least 700 people have died on the Lebanese side. The Israeli toll stood at 103 killed — including 36 civilians.
‘We want an end to violence’
Although White House press secretary Tony Snow said the White House message denouncing an escalation of Mideast fighting was for both sides, his remarks came as Israel’s Security Cabinet voted to expand the war effort.
The criticism was among the administration’s strongest concerning longtime ally Israel since the fighting began more than three weeks ago.
“We are working hard now to bridge differences between the United States position and some of the positions of our allies,” Snow told reporters in Texas, where President Bush was vacationing. “We want an end to violence and we do not want escalations.”
Egypt, Finland criticize Israeli plan
Egypt and Finland openly criticized Israel’s decision to expand its ground offensive in and predicted the Jewish state would gain nothing from more fighting in Lebanon.
“Since we want to see an end to the conflict immediately, of course nobody can approve of any plans to widen the conflict,” said Finnish Foreign Minister Erkki Tuomioja, whose country is president of the European Union.
At a joint news conference in Cairo, his Egyptian counterpart Ahmed Aboul Gheit said: “We have expressed the strongest of criticism towards that widening of the military operations.”
Gheit, whose government supports the Lebanese government on the need for an immediate cease-fire and a U.N. resolution including Israeli withdrawal, said the Israelis would cause pointless death and destruction by trying to advance.
“It doesn’t make sense. If the Israelis widen the operations, they will achieve nothing but more killing ... They would need a decade in order to achieve the political objective,” he said.
‘To the last shot’
In his first comments since a proposed cease-fire was unveiled on Sunday, Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah gave a deeply negative assessment of the proposed U.N. resolution, sponsored by the United States and France. Nasrallah called it "unfair and unjust" and said his guerrilla fighters would "keep fighting to the last shot."
"It has given Israel more than it wanted and more than it was looking for," he said in a speech televised on all local and regional television networks.
In a major shift in the Hezbollah position, Nasrallah said the militant organization was solidly behind a Lebanese government plan to deploy 15,000 soldiers in south Lebanon once a cease-fire is reached and Israel pulls out its forces.
"In the past we used to oppose or not agree on deployment of the army at the borders ... because we were concerned about the army. ... We agree on deployment of the army, but do not hide our fear for it," Nasrallah said. "The army could be destroyed within few days," he said.
The cleric also rejected a proposed international peacekeeping force for the region, saying it was not clear from whom they would be taking orders.
"This (the Lebanese army deployment) is the better and more convenient alternative than deployment of international troops. We don't know whose orders they will be taking," he said.
Israel plan: Extend war for 30 days
In the six-hour meeting, Israeli Cabinet officials were told a new offensive could mean 100 to 200 more military deaths, a participant said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief reporters. At least 67 Israeli soldiers have been confirmed killed.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Olmert spoke by telephone for a half-hour during the meeting, Israeli officials said. Olmert told the ministers the offensive will be accompanied by a diplomatic initiative, based on a U.S.-French truce proposal that would take Lebanon’s concerns into account, a participant in the meeting said.
Under the army’s plan, troops would push to Lebanon’s Litani River, about 18 miles from the border. Olmert and Defense Minister Amir Peretz will decide on the timing of the new push, said Trade Minister Eli Yishai, a member of the Security Cabinet.
“The assessment is it will last 30 days,” Yishai said afterward. “I think it is wrong to make this assessment. I think it will take a lot longer,” added Yishai, who had abstained in the vote.
The offensive won’t require a new call-up of reserves, Cabinet officials said. The government approved a call-up of some 30,000 reservists earlier this month.
More than 10,000 troops are in Lebanon, many of them regular soldiers. They are fighting in a four-mile stretch, and have encountered fierce resistance from Hezbollah.
Unusual midwar shakeup
The decision on the wider offensive came a day after the commander of Israeli forces in Lebanon was sidelined in an unusual midwar shake-up — another sign of the growing dissatisfaction with the military, which has been unable to stop Hezbollah’s rocket barrages.
The army denied it was dissatisfied with Maj. Gen. Udi Adam, but military commentators said the commander was seen as too slow and cautious. The deputy chief of staff, Maj. Gen. Moshe Kaplinski, was appointed to oversee the Lebanon fighting.
At least six missiles fired from Israel ships slammed into the south Beirut suburbs Wednesday, as residents were conducting a funeral for some of the 41 victims killed in Israeli airstrikes there three days earlier, police said.
About a mile away, some 400 people marched in a funeral procession for 30 of the 41 killed in an Israeli airstrike Monday. They carried the bodies draped in Lebanon’s green, red and white flag and chanted, “Death to America! Death to Israel!”
The Israeli military has declared a no-drive zone south of the Litani and threatened to blast any moving vehicles. In the Lebanese coastal city of Tyre, only pedestrians ventured into the streets.
Houses razed as Israel moves
The column of Israeli tanks and armored vehicles crossed into Lebanon from the Israeli town of Metulla under covering artillery fire and airstrikes, witnesses in the village of Bourj al-Mulouk said. The Israelis destroyed several houses as they advanced, the witnesses said, on condition of anonymity because they feared reprisals, and took positions about three miles inside Lebanese territory on a hill across from the tip of the northernmost end of the Galilee panhandle.
Israel also struck Lebanon’s largest Palestinian refugee camp, killing two people and wounding five. Lebanese and Palestinian officials said an Israeli gunship shelled the Ein el-Hilweh camp, but Israel’s military said the attack was an airstrike that targeted a house used by Hezbollah guerrillas. The camp is home to about 75,000 Palestinian refugees and their descendants who were displaced by the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.
Airstrikes also leveled a building in the Bekaa Valley town of Mashghara, trapping seven family members in the rubble. Five bodies were pulled out and the remaining two relatives were feared dead, officials said.
Hezbollah fired more than 160 rockets at Israel on Wednesday. Since the fighting began July 12, a total of 3,333 have been fired at Israel, officials said.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
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