Israel strikes near Lebanese-Syrian border

Israel killed at least 32 civilians yesterday, including 15 children, in air strikes meant to punish Lebanon for letting Hizbollah guerrillas menace the Jewish state's northern border.

Israel's bombing of Lebanese roads, bridges, ports and airports, as well as Hizbollah targets, is its most destructive onslaught since a 1982 invasion to expel Palestinian forces.

For the first time, ports in Christian areas were bombarded and a helicopter missile hit a lighthouse on Beirut's seafront.

An Israeli missile incinerated a van in southern Lebanon, killing 20 people, among them 15 children, in the deadliest single attack of the campaign launched by Israel after Hizbollah captured two of its soldiers and killed eight on Wednesday.

Police said the van was carrying two families fleeing the village of Marwaheen after Israeli loudspeaker warnings to leave their homes. Many of the bodies were charred and broken. Raids on roads, ports and petrol stations in north, east and south Lebanon killed 12 people and wounded 32, security sources said, bringing the death toll in four days of Israeli attacks to 100. All but four of the dead were civilians.

Israel's assault has choked Lebanon's economy and led to an exodus of tourists and foreigners.

Hizbollah rockets, meanwhile, struck deeper into Israel than ever before, wounding eight people and damaging two buildings in the Sea of Galilee town of Tiberias, police said.

Altogether 10 Israelis were wounded throughout northern Israel as about 80 rockets rained down from Lebanon. A military spokesman said Israel had deployed Patriot missile batteries in the northern city of Haifa to intercept Hizbollah rockets.

Rocket attacks have killed four civilians, including a child, in northern Israel this week. US President George W. Bush, who has declined to urge Israel to curb its military operations, said Syria should tell Hizbollah, also backed by Iran, to stop cross-border attacks.

Lebanon's main commercial ports of Beirut and Tripoli came under fire, as well as ports in the Christian towns of Jounieh and Amsheet, security sources and witnesses said.

One Lebanese soldier was killed and several wounded when an army radar station was hit in Batroun north of Beirut.

In strikes on Beirut, Israeli warplanes flattened Hizbollah's nine-storey headquarters and destroyed the office of a Hamas leader, Mohammed Nazzal. An official of the ruling Palestinian Islamist group said Nazzal had survived the attack.

Israel's campaign in Lebanon coincided with an offensive it launched in the Gaza Strip on June 28 to try to retrieve another captured soldier and halt Palestinian rocket fire.

Israeli warplanes also bombed offices and houses of Hizbollah officials in Baalbek in eastern Lebanon, security sources said. Witnesses said there were casualties but had no details because Hizbollah sealed off the area.

Israeli planes fired rockets near a Lebanese-Syrian border crossing, heightening fears it could extend its campaign to Syria, which along with Iran is Hizbollah's main ally.

Israel said it had attacked targets only in Lebanon. A Syrian official also said Israel had not attacked Syria.

Italy began evacuating its nationals from Lebanon yesterday. Other Western and Arab countries made plans to ferry their citizens from Lebanon to Syria or Cyprus. Israel aims not just to force Hizbollah to free the soldiers, whom the Shi'ite group wants to trade for prisoners in Israel, but to destroy its ability to fire rockets into Israel.