Bombs Rain on Bunker in Beirut
BEIRUT — Israeli warplanes dropped 23 tons of bombs on a bunker allegedly sheltering top Hezbollah leaders and hammered Lebanon's countryside Wednesday in the single deadliest day for Lebanese civilians in a week of fighting.
Thunderous blasts echoed over Beirut before 9 p.m. as dozens of aircraft dropped their loads of explosives on the impoverished, Hezbollah-run neighborhoods south of the capital.
Hezbollah, or Party of God, soon announced that its leaders, including Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, were elsewhere when Israel attacked, and were not hurt.
At least 55 Lebanese civilians were killed Wednesday in Israeli airstrikes on the capital and countryside, pushing this country's death toll beyond 300, the Lebanese government said.
Hezbollah also kept up its strikes, firing a torrent of rockets over the border into Israel.
Two boys, 3 and 9, who were members of Israel's Arab minority, were killed when rockets slammed into the town of Nazareth as they played outdoors, authorities there reported.
The deaths were the first from a rocket attack in the predominantly Arab town, about 25 miles south of the frontier.
The intensity of the bloodshed in Lebanon has drawn fierce criticism of both Israel and Hezbollah, with the United Nations calling Wednesday for an immediate cease-fire and warning of a humanitarian crisis for civilians caught in the crossfire.
U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour said both sides could bear "personal criminal responsibility" for their air assaults.
"Indiscriminate shelling of cities constitutes a foreseeable and unacceptable targeting of civilians," Arbour said in Geneva. "Similarly, the bombardment of sites with alleged military significance, but resulting invariably in the killing of innocent civilians, is unjustifiable."
Critics have said Israel's response to the killing of eight soldiers and capture of two others by the Shiite Muslim guerrillas last week is disproportionate.
At the same time, Hezbollah has been blamed for placing its fighters and weapons in densely populated civilian neighborhoods, and near United Nations facilities.
The Lebanese government did not break down Wednesday's deaths by city or target. Relentless attacks in the country's south and east killed dozens of civilians and one Hezbollah fighter, according to Lebanese television.
