President Hosni Mubarak criticizes Hizbullah and Hamas BEIRUT: Israeli warplanes battered Lebanon on Tuesday, killing 26 people, and more Hizbullah rockets hit the Israeli city of Haifa, with no sign that diplomacy would halt the week-old conflict any time soon. Nine family members, including children, were killed and four wounded in an air strike on their house in the village of Aitaroun. Four people were killed in other strikes in the south. A truck carrying medical supplies donated by the United Arab Emirates was hit and its driver killed on the Beirut-Damascus highway, the Health Ministry said. An air raid on a Lebanese army barracks in the Jamhour area east of Beirut killed 11 Lebanese soldiers, including four officers, and wounded 30. Hizbullah, a Shiite Muslim group backed by Syria and Iran, said one of its fighters had been killed, but gave no details. President Hosni Mubarak scolded Hamas and Hizbullah in an interview published Tuesday, arguing that the losses far outweighed the gains resulting from the capture of three Israeli soldiers. Igniting the situation to achieve limited gains means losing sight of the main Palestinian goal of obtaining an independent state, he said in an interview with the state-owned Al-Watani Al-Youm. Mubarak stressed that his comments on the Palestinian resistance also applied to the Lebanese resistance. The armed wing of the governing Palestinian movement Hamas was one of three groups to capture an Israeli soldier in the Gaza Strip on June 25, sparking a massive offensive on the territory that has left at least 78 dead, many of them civilians. Nobody doubts the right of peoples to resist occupation forces. But this resistance should take gains and losses into account, Mubarak said. The Israeli escalation in Lebanon is dragging the entire region onto a slippery slope, he said. The Lebanese people and the Palestinian people are paying the price. Up to six rockets slammed into Haifa, Israel s third-largest city and now a favored target for Hizbullah. No casualties were reported. A rocket salvo killed eight people in Haifa on Sunday. Israel s army refused to rule out a ground invasion only six years after it ended a 22-year occupation of south Lebanon. At this stage we do not think we have to activate massive ground forces into Lebanon but if we have to do this, we will, Moshe Kaplinsky, Israel s deputy army chief, told Israel Radio. He said the offensive, launched after Hizbullah fighters seized two Israeli soldiers and killed eight in a cross-border raid on July 12, would end within weeks. Israel needed more time to complete very clear goals, Kaplinsky added. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan called for a bigger, better armed and more robust international force to stabilize southern Lebanon and buy time for the Lebanese government to disarm Hizbullah guerrillas. Shrugging off U.S. and Israeli reluctance, Annan said he expected European troops to join the proposed force in a bid to end the fighting and prevent a wider Middle East conflagration. Annan and British Prime Minister Tony Blair have urged the UN Security Council to deploy a security force in Lebanon but Israel says it is too early to discuss it and Washington has questioned how it could stop Hizbullah from attacking Israel. It is urgent that the international community acts to make a difference on the ground, Annan said in Brussels, suggesting a force that would operate differently from toothless UN peacekeepers who have patrolled south Lebanon since 1978. The force will be larger, the way I see it, much larger than the 2,000-man force we have there, Annan said. He was speaking after talks with European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, who said some European Union member states were willing to contribute troops. A poll in the mass-circulation Yedioth Ahronoth daily showed a vast majority of Israelis backed the Lebanon offensive. Many favored assassinating Hizbullah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah. It showed 86 percent of Israelis believed the army s attacks on Lebanon were justified. Thousands of foreigners fled Lebanon, some by road to Syria, others seeking places on U.S. and European ships after Beirut s international airport was closed by Israeli bombardment. About 100,000 Lebanese have fled their homes to escape the violence. Israel s campaign has killed 230 people, all but 26 of them civilians, and inflicted the heaviest damage on Lebanon since the 1982 Israeli invasion to expel Palestinian guerrillas. Hizbullah has responded by attacking an Israeli naval vessel off Beirut, killing four sailors, and firing hundreds of rockets across the border, killing 12 Israelis. Israel is also pursuing an offensive in the Gaza Strip after Palestinian militants captured another soldier on June 25. Lebanon has repeatedly called for an immediate ceasefire, but world powers said any solution to the crisis must include the release of the two soldiers. Israel also wants Hizbullah to disarm in line with UN Security Council resolutions. The Beirut government is too weak and divided to force Hizbullah to yield to such demands. The Shiite group wants to swap the soldiers for Lebanese and Arab prisoners in Israeli jails. Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said Hizbullah must free its two captives unconditionally. She was speaking just hours after Public Security Minister Avi Dichter said Israel might at some stage have to negotiate over Lebanese prisoners held in Israel to end the crisis. Agencies
