Israel Expands Ground Forces Inside Lebanon Tyler Hicks/The New York Times Residents of a village east of Bint Jbail, Lebanon, took advantage of a lull in Israeli attacks to flee their ruined building. The Israelis say Bint Jbail harbors Hezbollah fighters.
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Enlarge this Image Rina Castelnuovo for The New York Times An Israeli soldier provided cover for soldiers evacuating a tank damaged by Hezbollah missiles Monday near the village of Kafr Kila.www.mmkey.com
The troops, backed by air support, tanks and armored bulldozers, entered at four places along the border, moving up to 4.5 miles inside to engage Hezbollah fighters and destroy their outposts and structures.
The Lebanese media reported that at least one helicopter with Israeli commandos landed near Baalbek, in eastern Lebanon, a Hezbollah stronghold well north of the Litani River, marking a deeper, if limited, invasion.
The Hezbollah television station Al Manar said its fighters repelled the Israeli troops. The Israeli Army said early Wednesday that its soldiers “arrested several Hezbollah figures,” shot others in a firefight and then returned with no injuries, but provided no further details.
[At least 10 civilians — five from the same family — were killed and several others wounded in an Israeli airstrike during the fighting near Baalbek, Reuters reported.]
Israel continued its promised 48-hour “partial suspension of aerial activity,” as the army called it, but there were numerous sorties. The air force flew missions in support of ground troops and to hit Hezbollah targets that included, the army said, two groups of fighters who were launching rockets; missile launchers; missile-launching sites; “access routes” in the Bekaa used to bring weapons from Syria, and “Hezbollah structures and headquarters.”
mmkey.com
At least one truck suspected of carrying weapons was bombed near the Syrian border, the Israeli Army said. Lebanese said there were repeated airstrikes in the area, where the highway from Damascus crosses the Bekaa, especially in the Shiite area of the valley known as the Hermil, where a pickup truck with canisters of cooking gas was rocketed.
In northern Israel, red and white tourist buses arrived along the border filled with soldiers who had been waiting weeks for orders. They moved into Lebanon through corridors cleared by bulldozers, tanks and engineering units.
There were house-to-house battles with hundreds of Hezbollah fighters in Lebanese towns and villages close to the border, especially around Aita al-Shaab, northeast of Shtula, Israel, where Hezbollah fighters breached the border on July 12, capturing two Israeli soldiers and killing three, and igniting this 20-day-old conflict.
There were other battles to the west around Taibe and Marun al Ras, Adessa and Rab-e-Talatin, the Israeli Army said. At least 3 Israeli soldiers and more than 20 Hezbollah fighters were killed in periods of heavy fighting, according to Arabic television and the Israeli Army. 1604.cn
Arab satellite television
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