Israeli strikes flatten Lebanese villages

Wed Jul 19, 4:31 PM ET

TYRE, Lebanon - An entire neighborhood of a southern Lebanese village is no more: All 15 houses were destroyed Wednesday in an airstrike by Israelis apparently determined to stop Hezbollah's frequent rocket fire from this region.

Down the road, residents fled north on treacherous roads regularly targeted with Israeli bombs. Meanwhile, U.N. peacekeepers in the nearby southern port of Tyre prepared to evacuate their families and other Westerners.

Israel's onslaught, now in its second week, has wreaked its worst damage in the poor farming regions of southern Lebanon. Warplanes have blasted bridges and roads and turned villages into ghost towns as civilians flee, abandoning the area to Hezbollah guerrillas who continue to fire rockets on Israel and engage any ground force that advances from the border 12 miles to the south.

The Tyre region is the heartland of Lebanon's Shiite Muslims. The guerrilla group is less powerful in the city of Tyre, an ancient port with white sandy beaches and Roman ruins where more moderate Shiite factions dominate. But the villages nestled in valleys outside the city are a bastion of support for the Shiite Hezbollah.

On Wednesday, Israeli strikes thundered down on two villages after Hezbollah fired rockets from the area, said residents. And it was residents who were hit in retaliation.

The Najdeh neighborhood in the village of Srifa was flattened into a heap of rubble - with the rooftop of a single house sticking out of the pile.

The village mayor said between 25 and 30 people were believed to have been in the 15 wrecked houses, and their fate was unknown. Fire engines put out the blaze and rescuers struggled to retrieve the casualties.

"This is a real massacre," Mayor Hussein Kamaledine said.

After the first strikes, Hezbollah fighters carrying walkie-talkies rushed for cover whenever Israeli warplanes or pilotless aircraft appeared overhead. The few remaining people in the village huddled in cellars and or with cattle in barns. Five members of the Aladine family wounded by shrapnel had to be carried on stretchers as by people walking three miles to a hospital in Sarafand.

Israeli bombs destroyed the main road to Srifa through the bluffs over Tyre so those trying to reach the village had to walk, rushing for cover under trees whenever the roar of planes or the drone of a pilotless plane was heard. Some smaller roads were still passable.

Farther north at Ghaziyeh, one person was killed and two wounded when an Israeli missile struck a building that housed a Hezbollah-affiliated social institution - which was empty - and a neighboring home.

"May God's wrath fall upon America and Israel," said Abu Ali Koteish, 53, who owns a nearby flower shop.

In the village of Salaa, a strike destroyed several houses. Villagers said bodies were trapped under the rubble with no heavy machinery available to rescue them. No casualty count was immediately known.

In Tyre, relatives of U.N. peacekeeping personnel as well as some French citizens were preparing to leave on a cruise ship.

Families camped out at a beach with their luggage to wait for the vessel, being sent by France. The ship was expected once arrangements could be made with Israel, which is blockading Lebanon's ports.

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