By Haaretz Service and News Agencies- 04/08/2006
Four Israeli missiles slammed into a refrigerated warehouse where farm workers were loading vegetables near the Lebanon-Syria border on Friday, killing at least 33 people, according to officials at the Syrian hospitals where the dead and wounded were taken.
At least 20 other workers were wounded in the attack.
More were likely buried under the rubble, said Ali Yaghi, a Lebanese civil defense official at the scene. A bulldozer was brought to the site to try to uncover any survivors.
The attack occurred about two miles inside the border when five Syrian refrigerator trucks arrived at a vegetable warehouse to load peaches and apples for the Syrian market, said drivers and witnesses. They said there were about 150 people at the warehouse when the attack occurred.
The toll of dead and injured was provided by the emergencies services at the al-Qusair National Hospital on the Lebanese-Syrian border and the National Hospital in the Syrian city of Homs.
The Israel Defense Forces issued a statement saying it was checking reports that farm workers and a vegetable storehouse were hit.
"The IDF attacked from the air two structures in the Bekaa Valley, on suspicions that weapons were being transported there."
Some of the workers were killed by flying rocks and shrapnel after the missiles struck, Yaghi said.
Yaghi said civilian pickup trucks were dispatched to haul the bodies, as well as the wounded to the Syrian hospitals. Roads toward hospitals in Lebanon had been cut off by Israeli airstrikes earlier Friday. A Lebanese ambulance also carried some victims, he said.
The agricultural site was run by a Lebanese company.
The strike occurred near the town of al-Qaa, about 10 kilometers (six miles) from Hermel, a Hezbollah stronghold that has been hit by Israeli airstrikes at least three times. The first attack was three days after fighting began 24 days ago.
Hermel was largely cut off from the rest of the country after two Israeli air raids destroyed a bridge on the Orontes river in the Bekaa Valley last Saturday.
The IAF on Friday renewed its attacks on Beirut as warplanes struck three bridges linking the Lebanese capital to northern Lebanon. Four civilians were killed and ten were wounded in the attacks, but as the day wore on 25 more casualties were reported in bombings in the Bekaa Valley.
According to International aid agencies, Israel`s heavy overnight bombing of Beirut`s main access road to the north has severed the last major overland route to bring relief supplies into Lebanon said Friday.
"This is Lebanon`s umbilical cord," Christiane Berthiaume of the World Food Program told The Associated Press. "This (road) has been the only way for us to bring in aid. We really need to find other ways to bring relief in."
Three bridges along the Mediterranean coast road from Arida on the northern border with Syria to the Lebanese capital were destroyed, said Berthiaume. WFP is coordinating United Nations relief efforts in the country.
A convoy that was meant to carry supplies and emergency personnel to Beirut on Friday is now stuck in Arida, she said, and UN teams have so far been refused permission to assess the damage caused by the bombing.
She added that UN trucks might be able to take secondary roads, but this would slow down aid shipments.
IAF renews strikes following Nasrallah threats
The bombings began several hours after Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah warned that if the IDF attacks central Beirut, his militants would fire rockets on Tel Aviv. However, Nasrallah also said - for the first time since fighting began 22 days ago - that Hezbollah would stop firing rockets on northern Israel in return for an end to air strikes throughout Lebanon.
Four civilians were killed and 10 wounded in the airstrikes, the Lebanese Red Cross said. A Lebanese soldier and four civilians were killed in air raids near Beirut`s airport and southern suburbs, security officials and witnesses said.
Later on Friday Israeli 25 civilian casualties were reported in an IAF strike on a parking lot used by trucks and buses near Lebanon`s border with Syria in the eastern Bekaa Valley.
Medics said warplanes bombarded the parking near the village of Qaa in the northern tip of the Bekaa close to a Lebanese customs point on the border.
The destruction of four bridges on the main north-south coastal highway linking Beirut to Syria contributed to further sealing Lebanon from the outside world Friday, as the Israeli naval blockade - along with earlier strikes against the road to the eastern boarder and the capital`s international airport - have largely closed off other access points.
Nasrallah: We`ll hit Tel Aviv if Beirut is bombarded
In his first televised appearance in more than a week, Hezbollah leader Nasrallah warned Israel that new airstrikes on Beirut would prompt his organization to attack Tel Aviv.
"If you bomb our capital Beirut, we will bomb the capital of your usurping entity... We will bomb Tel Aviv," Nasrallah said.
Nasrallah also offered a cease-fire of sorts.
"Any time you decide to stop your campaign against our cities, villages, civilians and infrastructure, we will not fire rockets on any Israeli settlement or city," he said in a taped television speech.
Nasrallah called the IDF commando raid on Baalbek in which five Hezbollah militants were captured and at least 10 more killed a "military failure," and said that the ground fighting between IDF troops and Hezbollah guerillas were becoming more intense and widespread.
Justice Minister Haim Ramon said Friday that Nasrallah wants Israel to stop attacking Hezbollah so he can retain the ability to threaten Israel whenever he wants.
"What Nasrallah wants is for us to give in, for him to remain with the rocket threat - and whenever he feels like it, he will be able to attack Israel, and whenever he feels like it, he will fire rockets on a civilian population," Ramon told Israel Radio. "What Nasrallah wants - and I certainly understand why he wants to attain this major accomplishment, from his perspective - it won`t happen. We won`t let it."
A senior defense source told Channel 1 television that Israel would destroy Lebanon`s infrastructure if Hezbollah fires rockets at Tel Aviv.
24 bombing runs in less than an hour
The three bridges bombed early Friday include one just north of Beirut at Maameltain and two further north at Madfoun and Halat, security sources and witnesses said.
The attacks punched craters in the bridges, spraying the roads with rubble and twisted metal and destroying several cars. They also set fire to trees on the hillsides. The bridges have been effectively closed to
traffic.
The IAF also pounded Beirut`s southern suburbs early Friday, launching at least 24 bombing runs in less than an hour, local media reported.
Israeli jets also launched three attacks near Baalbek in eastern Lebanon, Hezbollah`s TV, Al-Manar, and witnesses reached by telephone said. Information on damage and casualties was not immediately available.
Fighter jets flew over the southern suburb of Ouzai, the Lebanese Broadcasting Corp. television channel reported. Ouzai is a Hezbollah stronghold located where the highway to the south begins.
The Israel Defense Forces confirmed that there were airstrikes on Hezbollah targets across Lebanon, but did not give specific locations.
Friday`s attacks were the first on Ouzai since fighting between Hezbollah and Israel began 24 days ago. Residents in the area are believed to have fled earlier, owing its proximity to areas previously bombed by fighter planes.
Lebanon`s independent New TV aired footage of huge fires raging in several spots in Ouzai, where a road runs parallel to one of Beirut airport`s runways. It was not immediately apparent whether the airport was hit in the raids.
The capital`s southern suburbs have been the target of repeated Israeli attacks since fighting began July 12.
The IDF said the targets were Hezbollah facilities and an office of Hamas.
Many of the neighborhoods in the region just south of Beirut proper lay in rubble from repeated Israeli attacks since the fighting began July 12.
