Lebanon bridges hit, Hizbollah-Israeli battles rage

BEIRUT, Aug 4: Israeli air strikes today destroyed three highway bridges north of Beirut stalling several UN aid convoys for civilians caught up in Israel's expanding conflict with Hizbollah in Lebanon.

With no action to end the 24-day-old war emerging from the United Nations, fierce fighting raged in the south as Israeli troops tried to expand seven small border enclaves they control.

The bombing of bridges in the Christian heartlands north of the capital cut off the main coastal highway to Syria.

''It's really a major setback because we used this highway to move staff and supplies into the country,'' said Astrid van Genderen Stort of the UN refugee agency UNHCR. ''If we don't have new material coming in, we will basically be paralysed.'' Israeli raids have already wrecked the main Beirut-Damascus highway, although mountain roads still offer a perilous passage.

Prime Minister Fouad Siniora said yesterday Lebanon had only enough fuel for another week due to an Israeli blockade.

More than 150 Israeli air strikes hit targets across the south and artillery pounded border areas as Hizbollah tried to stop new Israeli incursions near Markaba and a strategic hill near the coastal town of Naqoura, security sources said.

''The thuds of explosions are continuous,'' a Lebanese security source said. ''There's an air strike every few minutes.'' Hizbollah fighters, setting roadside bombs and firing anti-tank missiles, killed five Israeli soldiers around Markaba, Al Arabiya television said. Israel has not confirmed the report.

Israel's army said it had killed 10 Hizbollah guerrillas.

Israel renewed its bombing of Lebanese civil installations a day after Hizbollah attacks killed eight civilians and four soldiers, the heaviest one-day Israeli toll of the war.

At least 693 people in Lebanon and 68 Israelis have been killed in the conflict ignited by a cross-border raid in which Hizbollah captured two Israeli soldiers on July 12.

At least five people, including a Lebanese army soldier, were killed and 12 wounded in the bombing of the bridges, the Red Cross said. Another soldier was killed in overnight strikes on the Ouzai slum area near Beirut airport, the army said. Bombs punched sections out of the bridges, spewing rubble and twisted metal over passing cars.

Israeli air strikes also hit the Beirut-Damascus highway near the Syrian border, as well as other roads in the Bekaa Valley. Bombs shook Beirut's Hizbollah-dominated Shi'ite suburbs, where previous strikes had already levelled some areas.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair delayed the start of his holiday today to work on a UN ceasefire for Lebanon. ''He thinks the next few days will be critical,'' a spokesman said.

US Assistant Secretary of State David Welch will visit Beirut tomorrow for talks with Lebanese officials on ways to end the war, Lebanese political sources said.

Siniora, angered by an Israeli air raid that killed 54 civilians, told Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to stay away from Beirut last Sunday, insisting on an immediate ceasefire.

The political sources said Welch would meet Siniora and other officials to discuss efforts at the United Nations to broker a ceasefire and deploy an international force in south Lebanon more robust than the UN peacekeepers already there.

The United States and France were to hold more talks to try to bridge their differences over a draft UN resolution.

Washington wants an international force in southern Lebanon immediately after a truce. France, a likely leader of the force, wants the troops to move in only after a permanent ceasefire.

Malaysia will contribute 1,000 troops to a UN peacekeeping force for Lebanon once a ceasefire is in place, state news agency Bernama quoted its military chief as saying.

Hizbollah's leader, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, offered on Thursday night to halt rocket attacks on Israel if the Jewish state ceased its bombardment of Lebanon, but he also threatened to lob missiles at Tel Aviv if Israel bombed central Beirut.

Israel has also launched an offensive in the Gaza Strip recover another captured soldier and stop Palestinian rockets.

Israel killed three Palestinians in the southern Gaza Strip today as it launched air strikes on militant targets that also wounded four people, witnesses and medics said.

At least 164 Palestinians, more than half of them civilians, have been killed since Israel's Gaza offensive began on June 28.

REUTERS