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I've not been looking at the news all day so somehow missed this:
Israel's army chief said any site in Lebanon could be a potential military target.
Brigadier General Dan Halutz's warning came as Israeli forces dramatically stepped up their campaign following border fighting with Hizbullah guerrillas yesterday in which two Israeli soldiers were captured and eight killed.
"Nowhere is safe [in Lebanon] ... as simple as that," he said, addressing his warning particularly to civilians in the southern Beirut district of Dahiya, where a large number of Hizbullah militants are based.
The Lebanese health minister said the Israeli campaign had killed 47 people and wounded 103 since yesterday. Israel said two people had been killed and at least 21 injured in Hizbullah strikes on towns in northern Israel.
Israel now finds itself on the verge of war on two fronts in an attempt to pressurise two groups, hamas and Hizbullah, to free captured soldiers. In Gaza, where it is aiming to force militants to release Corporal Gilad Shalit, jets bombed the Palestinian foreign ministry overnight.
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An Israel air force major general said the offensive was Israel's largest ever in Lebanon "if you measure it in number of targets hit in one night [and] the complexity of the strikes".
Military officials said the blockade was being imposed to drive back Hizbullah and prevent the south Lebanese-based militant group from taking the captured soldiers deeper inside Lebanon or across the border into Syria.
The soldiers were today named as 31-year-old Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, 26.
"The [Israeli] government wants to change the rules of the game in Lebanon and make the Lebanese government understand that it is responsible for what happens in Lebanon," the Israeli agriculture minister, Shalom Simchon, told Israel Radio.
"It is clear to us all that we are in for a continuing period of attrition. Calm in Lebanon will have to come to a halt until the government of Lebanon takes responsibility, until in Syria they realise that they can't sit quietly when people are uneasy in Nahariya [in northern Israel]."
Israeli military officials were quoted in the Ha'aretz newspaper promising to knock back civilian infrastructure in Lebanon "20, or even 50 years" if the captured soldiers were not returned.
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France and Russia condemned the fighting on both sides, but the US president, George Bush, promised to work with Israel and other "agents of peace" against Hizbullah.
Can the Israeli military/government get any more brazen and explicit about the fact that they are targeting civilians with military violence to achieve political aims? And will anyone still be able to deny that these are acts of terrorism? No, don't tell me, I already know... |
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