by Muntasser Abdullah
ARAB SALIM, Lebanon, Dec 16 (AFP) - Two Israeli shells slammed into a school in the southern village of Arab Salim Thursday, wounding 20 children, four of them seriously.
The children, aged between 5 and 13, were attending classes in this village, just north of the central sector of the Israeli-occupied border strip.
Police said the full extent of the casualties was not immediately clear because the wounded had been evacuated to hospital in the nearby town of Nabatiyeh under extremely difficult circumstances as the road to the town had also come under Israeli shelling.
Lebanese President Emile Lahoud said the shelling was a "crime" that endangered peace efforts.
"The recent Israeli escalation in southern Lebanon is a direct threat to peace efforts in the region," he said, calling for an urgent meeting of the committee that monitors the April 1996 truce between the two countries.
A similar call came earlier from Prime Minister Salim Hoss who asked the committee - made up of representatives from France, Syria and the United States as well as Israel and Lebanon - to convene as soon as possible.
"This new crime is the latest in a litany of outrages perpetrated by Israel against innocent civilians in Lebanon," he told reporters.
A Lebanese truce monitor said the committee would meet on Friday to hear Beirut's protest.
The multinational panel, which meets in the southern town of Naqura, oversees the truce under which both Israel and Lebanese guerrillas undertook not to launch attacks from or against civilian areas.
So far this year 22 civilians have been killed and 187 wounded, according to one media toll.
An Israeli army spokesman said the injuries to civilians "were caused inadvertently," but did not apologize.
"The Israeli army did not intend to provoke an escalation in southern Lebanon and its policy is to avoid harming or allowing others to harm civilians," said a statement issued by the army's spokesman.
"The bombardment was in retaliation for terrorist fire on an SLA (South Lebanon Army, Israel's militia ally) position from a built-up area around the school and was not aimed at the built-up area.
US ambassador to Lebanon David Satterfield said Thursday that Secretary of State Madeleine Albright would raise the incident at the Israeli-Syrian talks, which entered their second day in Washington Thursday, the official Lebanese news agency reported.
ANI said Satterfield had contacted Hoss to express Washington's "regrets" at what had occurred.
Thursday's Israeli artillery bombardment followed a string of attacks on positions of the Israeli army and the SLA launched by the Shiite militant group Amal.
The group said it made 10 attacks on Israeli targets in the border strip. The SLA confirmed the attacks but made no immediate mention of any casualties.
Israeli aircraft flew over southern Lebanon after the artillery bombardment, penetrating as far as the capital, where they caused a sonic boom as they broke the sound barrier.
On Wednesday, hours ahead of the restart of peace talks between Israel and Syria in Washington, another fighting group, Hizbullah, launched a series of attacks on Israeli and SLA positions. Hizbullah's leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, insisted the attacks were unrelated to the talks.
But Israeli officials have said they will not negotiate with a gun to their head and have demanded that Syria use its preponderant influence in Lebanon to put an end to guerrilla attacks on its positions while the talks go on.
He said he did not expect any request from Damascus to halt the group's armed campaign to end Israel's 21-year occupation of south Lebanon.
But his expectations were dashed when Syrian Foreign Minister Farouq al-Shara promised in Washington on Thursday to crack down on the "enemies of peace" as part of the peacemaking process with Israel.
