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Many Lebanese families were buried under the rubble of what used to be their homes. (Reuters)
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TYRE, Lebanon — At least 55 Lebanese civilians were killed an d scores others were wounded in fresh Israeli air strikes across Lebanon in the early hours of Wednesday, July 19, as the occupation army said it was conducting a limited ground assault across the Lebanese border.
Twenty-one Lebanese civilians were killed and 30 others wounded in Israeli attacks on Srifa village in southern Lebanon, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP) quoting police sources.
"Fighter-bombers and helicopters carried out a series of raids lasting two hours between 1:00 am and 3:00 am (2200 GMT-midnight Tuesday) on the same sector in the centre of the village, part of which was completely destroyed," one resident told AFP by phone.
Israeli gunboats also took part in the attack on the village, which is about 30 kilometers northeast of the southern port city of Tyre.
"At least 10 houses were destroyed," said the eyewitness.
In Salaa, another village near Tyre, ten members of a family were buried in the rubble when their home was completely destroyed during another Israeli air raid early Wednesday, police said.
"The raid by an Israeli fighter-bomber completely destroyed the two-storey house which collapsed onto its occupants, a family of ten, who are almost certainly dead," a Lebanese police officer said.
Six people, a Lebanese woman and her three children, a Sri Lankan and a Sudanese national, were killed in an Israeli raid on the central town of Nabatiyeh in southern Lebanon, police said.
Six civilians, members of the same family, were killed in an Israeli strike on a four-story building in the village of Nabi Sheet, near the eastern city of Baalbek, they added.
Five more civilians were killed in a raid against a number of trucks near Maarabun, near Baalbek, according to police.
Israel has so far killed more than 300 Lebanese, all but 14 of them civilians, and inflicted the heaviest destruction in Lebanon for two decades, with attacks targeting ports, roads, bridges, factories and petrol stations.
Hizbullah responded by attacking a naval vessel off Beirut and firing hundreds of rockets at northern Israel, killing 25 people, 13 of them civilians.
Targeting Aid
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"We have no time limitations…It will take as long as it takes," said Olmert. (Reuters)
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With international aid tickling in, Israeli warplanes continued to target trucks loaded with nothing but aid supplies war-ravaged Lebanese civilians.
Four lorries destroyed by Israeli air raids near the Christian town of Zahle in Lebanon's Bekaa valley on Tuesday, July 18, were carrying nothing but medicines and food provisions, an AFP correspondent witnessed.
An Israeli military spokesman claimed the lorries had been carrying arms, munitions and explosives from Syria bound for Hizbullah fighters in the Bekaa valley
An AFP journalist saw that one of the lorries was transporting medicine from the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
Another had been carrying vegetable oil, which spilled over the road, a third had a cargo of provisions and the fourth was empty.
The UAE has denounced the Israeli bombardment of one of their humanitarian convoys.
Meanwhile Turkish diplomats in Beirut said that a Turkish truck carrying cooking oil was also destroyed by Israeli fire in the Bekaa valley on Tuesday.
The Israeli military carried out at least six attacks on lorries in the Zahle area, police said.
"Israel is clearly trying to disrupt daily life for the Lebanese, to isolate Bekaa from the rest of the country and to cut the supply lines to the Hizbullah," one police officer said.
Ground Troops
In what can signal a new strategic development in the seven-day conflict, the Israeli army said Wednesday its troops were conducting a limited ground assault across the Lebanese border to carry out "pinpoint" raids against alleged Hizbullah positions.
"Our forces have been operating since this morning over our border with Lebanon," a military source told AFP.
"These are limited and pinpointed actions aimed at eliminating the threat of Hizbullah near the border," he added.
"The forces are penetrating into Lebanon and pulling out when their mission is accomplished... We're not talking about any large-scale incursion."
Israeli army General Alon Friedman claimed they had destroyed around 50 percent of the rocket and missile supplies of the Lebanese resistance group.
During a surprise visit to Haifa, a frequent target of Hizbullah's retaliatory rocket attacks, Israeli Premier Ehud Olmert has stressed that there was no time limit to his onslaught on Lebanon.
"We will not end this operation only to be forced to resume it in two months time. We have no time limitations."
Olmert said the offensive would continue until the two soldiers taken prisoner by Hizbullah to trade for Lebanese detainees in Israeli jails were freed.
"It will take as long as it takes."
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