by Reuters - Tuesday 18 July 2006
A house destroyed by Israeli jets in Baalbek, east Lebanon
At least six people have been killed in the latest airstrikes by Israeli warplanes in Lebanon, raising the death toll there to more than 200.
The six, all civilians from one family, were killed during an air raid that hit a house early on Tuesday in a Lebanese border village, as diplomatic efforts brought no signs of an end to the week-old assault launched in retaliation against Hezbollah attacks.
"We are working with our bare hands and so far we have recovered six bodies. More are still under the rubble," Salim Mourad, head of Aytaroun`s village municipality, told Hezbollah`s Al-Manar television.
Israel`s military action in Lebanon has so far killed 210 people, all but 14 of them civilians, and inflicted the heaviest destruction in the country for two decades, with attacks on ports, roads, bridges, factories and petrol stations.
Israeli aircraft also struck Beirut`s southern suburb and an army position overlooking the capital as well as two other Lebanese towns.
Television footage showed balls of fire and clouds of smoke billowing from a Lebanese army position east of Beirut after repeated Israeli air raids in the early hours of Tuesday. Several soldiers were wounded, a security source said.
Loud explosions caused by raids on Beirut`s southern suburb were also heard across the capital. Previous strikes on the area had destroyed Hezbollah`s headquarters.
Raids on the Christian coastal town of Byblos north of Beirut damaged two trucks without inflicting casualties, police said. Warplanes also hit the eastern town of Baalbek.
Hezbollah attacks
Hezbollah fired dozens of rockets at the Israeli city of Haifa on Monday and medics said a three-storey building collapsed, wounding two people. Israel closed Haifa`s port.
An Israeli home is wrecked after
being hit by a Katyusha rocket.
Another wave of rockets struck deep inside Israel, including the town of Afula 50km south of the border. One rocket landed next to a hospital in Safed, wounding six people.
Hezbollah`s attacks on a naval vessel off Beirut and the firing of hundreds of rockets at northern Israel have killed 24 people so far, 12 of them civilians.
As Tel Aviv vowed to press on with its campaign, thousands of foreigners fled Lebanon - some by road to Syria, others seeking places on US and European ships.
Fighting erupted after Hezbollah, the Shia resistance group backed by Syria and Iran and part of Lebanon`s government, seized two Israeli soldiers and killed eight in a cross-border raid on northern Israel on July 12.
Lebanon has repeatedly called for an immediate ceasefire, but world powers have said any solution to the crisis must include the release of the two soldiers, which Hezbollah wants to swap for prisoners in Israeli jails.
Reuters
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