Israel bombs road, leaving Beirut cut off

HALAT, Lebanon - Israeli airstrikes destroyed four bridges along Lebanon's main north-south highway in the Christian heartland north of Beirut on Friday and killed more than 30 people far from territory controlled by the Hezbollah militia with which Israel is at war.

With the Beirut-Damascus road already cut at several points, the attacks seemed aimed at arms routes from Syria, but because those same routes bring supplies and aid into the country, they tightened Lebanon's sense of siege.

Despite the bombardments, Hezbollah fired another 200 rockets at Israel, killing four people, and launching its farthest rocket yet, 50 miles from the border to the outskirts of the town of Hadera, on the coastal highway north of Tel Aviv.

Here in Halat, at the steep gorge cut by the Fidar River running down the mountains to the Mediterranean, dozens of Maronite Catholic residents gathered to stare in stunned silence at a roughly 200-yard stretch of four-lane highway flattened into rubble. The walls of the bridge's support rose like cliffs at either end.

"Where are the Katyushas of the Hezbollah here?" asked Joseph Abihana, who said he had been awakened by four bomb blasts. "We are used to being a safe area here, but now there is no safety. I blame the Israelis."

An eight-truck U.N. aid convoy carrying tons of supplies was stuck north of the blown-out bridge. Other aid convoys from Beirut were unable to go to south.

"The whole road is gone," said Astrid van Genderan Stort, a U.N. official here. "It's really a major setback because we used this highway to move staff and supplies into the country."

In the Bekaa Valley, along the Syrian border, an airstrike killed at least 28 seasonal farmworkers, most of them Syrian Kurds, loading fruit and vegetables into a refrigerated truck.

Ali Yaghi, the head of the rescue service in the tiny village of Qaa, told reporters that others might be buried in the rubble. Israel has frequently fired upon vehicles it suspected of carrying fighters or weapons, but has also hit vehicles with water drilling rigs, convoys of medical supplies and minivans of fleeing civilians.

The airstrikes began in the early morning, hitting familiar targets in the Hezbollah strongholds just south of Beirut, Haret-Hrek and Bir Abed, already largely flattened, in the sprawling slum known as Dahieh. They spread for the first time to the little port and fishing village of Quzai near the Beirut airport.

In Quzai, pieces of boat hulls, engines and shrapnel were scattered throughout the field, and were flung several blocks away, injuring one person. Nearby, a Hezbollah-funded youth center was decimated in the early morning attacks that rattled nerves and signaled a widening of bombing beyond Haret Hraik, where most of the bombing has occurred.

Decades ago, the neighborhood was lined with luxurious beaches and resorts. But during the civil war, it was populated by refugees who built shanty towns and houses that have remained there ever since.

More than 400 fishing boats and trawlers, most of them moored in a dock, others stored in a nearby field, were destroyed in the bombings, residents said. "The planes came from above and then we heard ships shooting too," said Jihad al-Hoss, who lived across the road. "They hit 30 or 35 rounds into the area."

At least five people were killed in the attacks in northern Lebanon, security officials said, while the Lebanese army - essentially a noncombatant force in this conflict - said one of its soldiers was killed in the bombardment of the southern suburbs.

Fierce ground fighting continued in the south, with Israel bringing up more artillery to the border to pound the hillside villages and Hezbollah hiding places and calling up more reserves to bolster the roughly 10,000 troops already in Lebanon. The Israeli army said two soldiers and an officer were killed Friday when they were struck by an anti-tank rocket.

The Israeli army said it had established positions in 11 villages, but in more than three weeks of fighting it has met stiff resistance from Hezbollah guerrillas.

Amid criticism in Israel that the prosecution of the war has been too slow and timid, military officials were reportedly gearing up for a harder push with a goal of reaching 10 miles inside Lebanon's border and the possibility of at least temporarily occupying the port city of Tyre.

Throughout the night, dozens of air raids shook villages in the vicinities of Tyre and Nabitiye behind the front lines.

At the United Nations on Friday, France and the United States remained locked in negotiations over the text of a resolution that would halt the fighting, decide who would monitor the truce and lay down plans for a political settlement designed to prevent a recurrence of hostilities.

John R. Bolton, the U.S. ambassador, and Jean-Marc de la Sabliere, the French ambassador, met three times during the day and were in frequent communication with Paris and Washington. Negotiations were expected to continue through the weekend.

Secretary-General Kofi Annan was on a brief trip to the Dominican Republic, but he spoke on the telephone with both President Bush and French President Jacques Chirac. A spokesman, Ahmad Fawzi, portrayed Annan as "deeply, deeply concerned that it is taking so long" to come up with a resolution.

Ghana's ambassador, Nana Effah-Apenteng, president of the Security Council for August, said members were on call over the weekend and prepared to meet if summoned. A vote cannot take place until 24 hours after a resolution is formally introduced.

One cause of the delay was the necessity of consulting with Israel, Lebanon, and - through the Lebanese government - Hezbollah to gauge reactions.

Once the resolution is agreed to halt the fighting, a second one is envisaged a week or two later that would set conditions for a permanent cease-fire and authorize an international force to patrol a buffer zone in south Lebanon.

The wave of bombings was yet another crippling blow to Lebanon's infrastructure, painstakingly rebuilt over the last decade after years of civil war.

Lebanese officials say 71 bridges have been destroyed - including elaborate overpasses on the Damascus road - and estimate the damage at $2 billion and rising.

Nearly a quarter of the population of 4 million has been displaced, with more than 100,000 finding temporary shelter in schools.

Supplies of fuel for Lebanon's power plants is running low and there are fears that the electricity could be shut down. In the central Hamra district in the capital, the normally clogged traffic is non-existent, except at the rare gas station, which is jammed.

The war came home to Lebanon's Christian region on Friday, as different in this religiously divided land as night and day from the poor and pious Shiite Muslim strongholds of Hezbollah. As the steep mountains rise up from the sea they hold what is often a lush, spectacular landscape that is home to a population that appreciates earthly pleasures. Several of the bridges hit Friday were near the major resort area around Jounieh, site of the Casino Du Liban, famous for its floor shows.

Because of the steep mountain terrain, cut by gorges, it will be extremely difficult to bring in any supplies. There is no road across the crest of the mountains, and any convoy would have to travel for many hours on narrow twisting roads.

But, while many Christians have long distrusted Hezbollah and other Muslims and Druse-there were, after all, 15 years of civil war along sectarian lines - and criticized the seizure of two Israeli soldiers on July 12 that touched off the conflict, the damage Israel has inflicted on Lebanon appears to be shifting sentiments.

"Public opinion is 100 per cent against Israel from this area," said Camille Chamoun, scion of one of the three major Christian families who mounted militias against the Muslim and Palestinian forces during the civil war and whose faction was aligned with Israel during their 1982 invasion.

"This is just an excuse to hit more of our infrastructure," said Manal Azzi, a 26-year old health worker who lives next to the destroyed bridge here who was furious.

"I'm here speaking as a Christian," she went on. "Israel is our main invader and has been for the last 50 years. Right now we're getting more civilian casualties, so we'll have another war in 10, 15 years.

"They talk about a new Middle East. To serve who? Israel and the United States. Israel is itself a terrorist state backed up by the United States."

A little further south, the highway was cut in half by an explosion that struck a small truck and a Mercedes sedan in the southbound lane, knocking out the telecommunications lines linking about 300,000 subscribers in the north and the rest of the country.

"We were very surprised, it's a new escalation," said Dr. Youssef Abdul, the general director of the Ministry of Telecommunications, sweating under a baseball cap. "Let me tell you, this is a Christian area. We will resist by repairing. We are very surprised."

Kamil Fakeh, a refugee from the hard-hit southern village of Srifa, appeared stunned. "They want to destroy Hezbollah, but they are destroying Lebanon," he said.