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Hizbullah taking a toll with salvos of simultaneously fired rockets

SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM
Monday, August 7, 2006

TEL AVIV — Hizbullah has mastered the use of rocket salvos in strikes against Israel.

Israeli military sources said Hizbullah gunners have coordinated attacks, firing dozens of rockets simultaneously. The sources said the rockets have been particularly effective in targeting Israeli communities within 20 kilometers of the Lebanese border.

On Sunday, Israel reported the landing of 37 rockets in the area of Kiryat Shemona in the space of a minute. The sources said this marked the single heaviest salvo by Hizbullah since the start of the war on July 12.

At least 12 people were killed in the Hizbullah salvo near Kibbutz Kfar Giladi, Middle East Newsline reported. All of them were reserve soldiers waiting to report for duty in Lebanon, and military sources said the troops appeared to have been targeted by Hizbullah gunners.

"Every day is worse than the previous day," Kiryat Shemona Mayor Haim Barbivai said.

Throughout the afternoon, Hizbullah fired wave after wave of Katyusha rockets against northern communities. In all, more than 200 rockets were fired, including seven into Haifa on Sunday evening.

"Most of the rockets have been fired from south of the Litani River," Agriculture Minister Shalom Simchon said on Monday. "This is what the Cabinet was told yesterday."

Three people were killed and 175 people were injured in the northern Israeli city. The rockets were said to have been fired from the Lebanese city of Tyre and the village of Kana.

On Monday, Hizbullah resumed heavy rocket fire on northern Israel, particularly Kiryat Shemona. So far, nearly 100 Katyusha rockets have landed in Israel.

"The area between the Litani River and the border is where many short- and medium-range Katyusha rockets as well as not a few long-range launchers are located," Brig. Gen. Alon Friedman, chief of staff of Northern Command, said.

For the first time, authorities have acknowledged the possibility that residents of some northern communities could be evacuated until the end of the war. More than 300,000 people have already fled northern Israel, leaving hundreds of thousands of others to live in bomb shelters over the last month.

"There are intentions to evacuate people and communities who have been sitting in bunkers over the last four weeks," Maj. Gen. Yitzhak Gershon, head of the military's Home Command, said. "There have been places found for 25,000 people."

"If we don't go into Lebanon to stop these missiles then we'll have to go into Syria," parliamentarian Effi Eitam, a member of the Knesset Foreign Relations and Defense Committee, said.

Senior ministers have expressed skepticism over Israel's ability to halt Hizbullah rockets or establish a buffer zone up to Lebanon's Litani River. They said the government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who blocked plans for a military advance to the Litani, has been hoping for an effective United Nations-sponsored ceasefire.

"The time has come for a diplomatic arrangement," Housing Minister Meir Shetreet said.

Officials said Hizbullah has stored Katyushas in hundreds of homes throughout southern Lebanon. They said the military did not have enough troops or resources for a house-to-house search.

"The issue of Katyushas is a statistical matter," Shetreet said. "They're not accurate. They fire it toward a certain area. It is not a strategic threat."

Hizbullah has struck numerous communities and military bases in northern Israel. They included an air command and control center near Safed and the air base at Ramat David.

"It is altogether possible that Israel will be unable to dismantle or completely disarm Hizbullah," said Ephraim Lavie, a reserve colonel in Israeli intelligence and researcher at the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, "and will have to settle for a substantial reduction in the latter's military capabilities and a limitation of the gains it can register as a result of protracted fighting with the missile reserve it retains."


Copyright © 2006 East West Services, Inc.

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