Israel Launches Air Raids on Southern Lebanon

12/07/2006 11:35:24 AM - CTV News

Israeli aircraft blew up roads, bridges and guerrilla posts in southern Lebanon Wednesday following the capture of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah guerrillas.

There has been heavy fighting in the area around the Israeli-Lebanon border, with Hezbollah firing rockets and Israel responding with tank and artillery fire, as well as air strikes.

Two Lebanese civilians were killed in the Israeli air strikes on a bridge, Lebanese security officials were quoted as saying on Arab TV stations.

The Israeli army confirmed that seven Israeli soldiers were killed during the fighting -- three were killed in the initial raid, while four others were killed when their tank went over a landmine.

Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah said he would only release the two captured Israeli soldiers as part of a prisoner swap with Palestinians jailed in Israel.

"Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers near the border with occupied Palestine, and the captives have been moved to a safe area,'' he said in a statement.

Nasrallah called their capture "our natural, only and logical right" to obtain the freedom of prisoners jailed in Israel.

Hezbollah also said it had destroyed an Israeli tank as it tried to cross the frontier.

Israel's Defence Ministry confirmed the capture of the Israeli soldiers and said the Lebanese government was responsible for their safety.

'Act of War'

Meanwhile, Israel's military said it planned to call up several thousand reserve troops as Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert called the Lebanese actions an "an act of war."

Earlier, Olmert called an emergency cabinet meeting and said Lebanese guerrillas would pay a "heavy price" for Wednesday's attacks.

"These are difficult days for the state of Israel and its citizens,'' Olmert told reporters.

"There are people ... who are trying to test our resolve,'' he said. "They will fail and they will pay a heavy price for their actions,'' he said.

Residents of Israeli towns along the northern border were ordered to seek cover in underground bomb shelters.

Reporting from the Israeli-Lebanese border, CTV's Middle East bureau chief Janis Mackey Frayer said she could see "what was left over from the fighting."

"Israeli warplanes have bombed a number of bridges in southern Lebanon," Mackey Frayer told Newsnet Wednesday. "I can see the fires still burning on the bridges."

Jubilant

Meanwhile, jubilant residents of south Beirut, a stronghold of Hezbollah, reportedly fired their guns in the air and set off firecrackers after reports of the capture of the Israeli soldiers were announced.

Hezbollah's TV station reported that Israeli artillery was pounding the fringes of the villages of Aita el-Shaab, Ramieh and Yaroun in the hills east of the coastal border port of Naqoura.

"The Middle East is teetering on the brink, if it hasn't already gone over the brink, of another major flare up," journalist Jerrold Kessel told CTV Newsnet Wednesday.

Reporting from Jerusalem, Kessel said Olmert had hinted at "the responsibility of Syria," which Olmert said "is consistently supporting terrorist elements in the region."

Israeli troops and Hezbollah guerrillas occasionally clash along the border in southern Lebanon.

The latest flare-up came as Israel continued its two-week-old offensive against Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip to try to win the release of captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.

The clashes came after Israel's air force dropped a quarter-tonne bomb on a residential building in Gaza Wednesday, killing at least six people, including two children.

The target of the air strike had been top Hamas militants meeting in the building, but Hamas said its top fugitive got away.

With files from the Associated Press

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