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Rocket strike kills 12 Israeli soldiers
Sun Aug 6, 2006 2:10pm ET
By Nadim Ladki
BEIRUT (Reuters) - Hizbollah killed 12 Israeli soldiers on Sunday in its deadliest rocket strike yet and Israeli bombs killed 19 Lebanese civilians as Lebanon rejected a draft U.N. resolution to end the 26-day-old war.
More Hizbollah rockets hit the northern Israeli city of Haifa, killing at least one person and wounding many more, medics said. A police commander told Israel Radio that a rocket slammed into two adjacent houses, causing them to partly collapse. Several people were trapped in the rubble.
In the Israeli village of Kfar Giladi, a rocket hit a group of Israeli reservists called up for the Lebanon offensive. Medics said 12 were killed and dozens were wounded.
Soldiers near the scene held their heads and one wept as a military ambulance pulled away. Helicopters landed nearby to fly the badly wounded to hospitals further from the war front.
"I don't recall so many dead ever. This is terrible," said Ron Valensi, head of the upper Galilee municipal council and a resident of Kfar Giladi, speaking on Channel 2 Television.
Lebanon's parliament speaker Nabih Berri said his country rejected the U.S.-French draft Security Council resolution because it would let Israeli forces stay on Lebanese soil.
Berri, a Shi'ite politician who has been the main channel between Hizbollah and Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, said the draft ignored the Beirut government's seven-point plan calling for a ceasefire, the withdrawal of Israeli forces and the return of all displaced civilians among other things.
"All of Lebanon rejects any resolution that is outside these seven points," Berri told a news conference.
Lebanon submitted an amendment to the Security Council calling for an Israeli withdrawal to be added to the resolution.
SMIRMISHES EXPECTED
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that agreeing on a resolution would not end all fighting.
"I would hope that you would see very early on an end to large-scale violence," she said, but did not rule out "skirmishes for some time to come".
U.S. National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley said that once a resolution was adopted, Washington wanted a second one establishing a peacekeeping force in days, not weeks.
Hizbollah, backed by Syria and Iran, has killed 58 Israeli soldiers and 34 civilians in the conflict, sparked when its men seized two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid on July 12.
The Israeli army said on Sunday it had captured one of the Hizbollah fighters who took part in the seizure of the soldiers.
At least 759 people have been killed in Lebanon during the war, including 16 overnight and on Sunday in the bombing of five southern villages.
Two civilians died when an Israeli air strike hit a pickup truck ahead of a U.N. aid convoy heading for the southern city of Tyre, U.N. sources said. Continued...