Israel Military Assaults Lebanon

Israeli warplanes launched two waves of raids on suspected Hezbollah guerrilla targets in Lebanon, the Israeli army said. Hours after Israeli planes launched strikes in the northeast near Syria, the farthest north Israel has struck into Lebanon this year, the air force launched a second sortie in the Ya'atar area, north of Israel's self-declared "security zone" in southern Lebanon. Hezbollah wants to oust Israel from that 9-mile-wide zone it occupies.

The South Lebanon Army came under guerrilla attack Tuesday while in retreat from villages in Lebanon's strategic Jezzine enclave, prompting Israel to launch air raids and artillery strikes in support of its beleaguered ally. The SLA's long-awaited withdrawal from the enclave it has occupied for 14 years is widely viewed as a precursor to an eventual pullout of Israeli troops from a so-called security zone they have occupied in southern Lebanon since 1985.

Guerrilla and Israeli attacks killed seven people in the highest single-day toll this year, just days before elections in Israel that could alter the course of the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon. The deadliest attack occurred along a road near Jezzine, north of Marjayoun, the main city in the occupied southern strip. A roadside bomb exploded, killing four people. No one claimed responsibility, but the attack bore guerrilla hallmarks.

Guerrillas detonated a roadside bomb in Israeli-occupied southern Lebanon on Friday, killing an Israeli-allied militiaman and seriously wounding a militia officer, Lebanese security officials said. Earlier, an Israeli shell landed in a southern Lebanon village, wounding three civilians, said the officials, speaking on customary condition of anonymity.

With elections ahead of them and a graveyard of failed Lebanon policies behind them, senior Israeli officials must tread carefully as they strike back at Hezbollah guerrillas waging a war of attrition against the Jewish state. Military and political constraints are so far dictating a cautious response to an upsurge in Hezbollah ambushes that killed seven Israelis in less than a week, including the Israeli army's highest-ranking commander in southern Lebanon.

Launching an offensive "by air, land and sea," Israel sent warplanes pounding Islamic guerrilla targets inside Lebanon on Sunday in furious retaliation for an ambush that killed a brigadier general and three other Israelis. The general--the most senior Israeli army officer killed in Lebanon since Israel invaded in 1982--died earlier Sunday along with two soldiers and a journalist when Hezbollah militia detonated two roadside bombs in southern Lebanon.

Lebanese guerrillas ambushed an Israeli commando squad Tuesday, killing its commander and two officers and wounding five soldiers in a blow to Israeli forces in southern Lebanon. The troops were moving north of the Israeli-occupied zone when they ran into Hezbollah guerrillas, who opened fire at close range with automatic rifles and grenades. The commandos fired back and called in helicopter gunships, warplanes and artillery support before being evacuated, the Israeli army said.

Israeli troops demolished 14 houses in a village in southern Lebanon. A military spokesman in Jerusalem said the houses in the border village of Arnoun were destroyed because they were used in attacks on Israeli troops and their Lebanese militia allies. An Israeli soldier was wounded in a bomb attack near the razed houses this week.

An Israeli soldier was killed and two others were wounded before dawn Wednesday when one army unit mistakenly opened fire on another in southern Lebanon, an army commander said. The two Israeli units had started out on patrol together in Israel's self-declared security zone but were separated when one group lost its way. "The rear unit separated from the front forces and mistakenly thought they were terrorists," Brig. Gen. Etti Eitan, an army commander in the area, told Israel Radio.

Israeli warplanes struck eastern Lebanon on Tuesday, killing a woman and six of her children in an attack aimed at suspected guerrilla bases of the Iranian-backed group Hezbollah. Israeli Defense Minister Yitzhak Mordechai said in a statement that he had expressed sorrow to Lebanon through a third party. Israel said the killings were an accident. As expected, there was retaliation this morning, when more than a dozen rockets hit the town of Kiryat Shemona in northern Israel.