BEIRUT — Hizbullah resistance fighters continued on Thursday, July 20, to battle Israeli ground troops inside Lebanese territories, a day after killing a number of Israeli soldiers in a similar operation.
"There is intense fighting along the border inside Lebanese territory in the area of Aita Shaab," Milos Strugar, spokesman for the United Nations Interim Forces in Lebanon, told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Hizbullah fighters and Israeli occupation forces were locked in fierce fighting after the Israelis launched a new cross-border incursion into Lebanese territory.
The Israeli army said at least two soldiers were wounded when an anti-tank rocket was fired against an armored vehicle north of Avivim, the area on the border where two Israeli servicemen had been killed in fighting on Wednesday, July 19.
Israeli army radio also reported fighting north of Biranit between the army and Hizbullah forces.
Israel has been waging a massive air, sea and ground offensive against Lebanon since July 12, killing more than 300 people, the sweeping majority of whom are civilians, and wounded hundreds others.
The onslaught has also left Lebanon virtually cut off from the outside world with an Israeli air and sea blockade, and wrecked havoc on the tiny Arab country's infrastructure.
Winning
The Lebanese resistance group said in a statement that its fighters had destroyed two tanks in the ongoing fighting.
"In vain, Zionist enemy soldiers try to advance toward Lebanese territory to achieve military victories, and again Hizbullah confronts them and proves to them that they are an army without soldiers."
On Wednesday, Israeli troops clashed with Hizbullah fighters on the Lebanese side of the border, near the coastal border town of Naqoura, after they crossed the border before dawn.
The Israeli army said two soldiers had been killed and nine wounded in that fighting, while Hizbullah said one of its fighters died.
Israel has been sending its troops into Lebanon since it launched the assault in a bid to crush the Lebanese resistance group, which recently took two Israeli soldiers prisoners and killed eight others in an attack on an Israeli military post.
Israel says troops are regularly crossing the border to conduct "pinpoint" raids against Hizbullah posts.
Israel has not ruled out a major thrust into Lebanon, but is wary of returning to territory it abandoned under the pressure of Hizbullah attacks in 2000 after a 22-year occupation.
Twenty-nine Israelis, including 14 soldiers, have been killed since the initial Hizbullah attack.
More Raids
Beirut citizens inspect a mosque targeted by an Israeli strike. (Reuters)
Israel pursued on Thursday devastating air strikes against Lebanese areas for the ninth day.
Its aircraft struck mostly at Shiite strongholds in the eastern towns of Baalbek and Hermel, the southern Beirut area of Bir al-Abed and several southern villages.
Soon after Lebanon's prime minister Fouad Siniora said Israel's onslaught had "torn the country to shreds," bombs crashed into a southern Beirut suburb on Wednesday aiming at what an Israeli military source said was a bunker sheltering Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah.
The source said dozens of planes dropped 23 tones of explosive on the target in Burj al-Barajneh.
Hizbullah said it had suffered no casualties in the raid on what it said was a half-built mosque.
Other air strikes killed 65 Lebanese civilians on Wednesday, the deadliest one-day toll so far.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour criticized the growing death toll, saying the indiscriminate shelling of cities and of nearby military sites was invariably resulting in the deaths of innocent civilians.
"International law demands accountability," Arbour said in Geneva.
"The scale of the killings in the region, and their predictability, could engage the personal criminal responsibility of those involved, particularly those in a position of command and control."
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