A day of firsts: Hizbullah trades long-distance blows with Israelis

Hizbullah fired more rockets into Israel on Wednesday than on any previous day of the 22-day-old war, after helicopter-borne commandos attacked resistance targets in Israel's deepest raid into Lebanon. Air strikes in support of the helicopter raid in the Hizbullah stronghold of Baalbek in northeastern Lebanon killed 19 people, including five children.

In Jerusalem, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Israel would fight on until an international force reaches South Lebanon. He also said the release of two Israeli soldiers captured by Hizbullah must be unconditional, signaling Israel does not favor a prisoner swap. The prime minister added that the outcome of fighting in Lebanon will create "new momentum" for Israel's plan to separate from the Palestinians by withdrawing from much of the West Bank.

Olmert said his government favors finding a diplomatic solution to the Lebanon conflict but that "Israel is not afraid of fighting ... No one can intimidate Israel. No amount of rockets and missiles can stop Israel from exercising its fundamental right to self-defense."

Justice Minister Haim Ramon later told Israeli public radio the offensive in Lebanon would last until the end of next week.

Soon after Olmert spoke, one of more than 180 Hizbullah rockets landed just inside the West Bank after flying further than any fired at Israel in the past three weeks. The rocket struck near the Palestinian village Faqua in the northernmost West Bank, Israeli radio said. Israeli police and Hizbullah both said it was the highest number of rockets fired into Israel on one day since the war began. The barrage killed one person.

Hizbullah rockets hit near the Israeli city of Beit Shean, some 60 kilometers from the Lebanese border, public radio said. It marked the first time that a Hizbullah rocket had hit what is considered Israel's central region, the nation's most populated area.

Witnesses in the West Bank city of Jenin told AFP they saw at least one rocket slam into Maale Gilboa, a kibbutz just on the Israeli side of the border with the Palestinian territory.

Israel said its troops seized five Hizbullah militants in a night raid on a Hizbullah-run hospital in Baalbek, about 100 kilometers northeast of Beirut.

An army spokeswoman said the fighters captured in Baalbek had been brought to Israel and that all the Israeli troops involved in the raid had returned to their base. Hizbullah denied the claim, saying "the citizens kidnapped in Baalbek are normal civilians."

Security sources said two Hizbullah fighters were also killed during the raid.

A statement broadcast by Hizbullah's Al-Manar television said: "The Islamic resistance announces that it has foiled an Israeli landing operation in Baalbek and denies that the enemy has captured any of its members."

A Hizbullah spokesman had earlier said Israeli troops were surrounded after attacking Dar Al-Hikmeh Hospital, adding that all patients had been evacuated on July 12.

One of a series of air raids struck the village of Al-Jamaliyeh, about 1 kilometer from the hospital. A missile hit the house of the village's mayor, instantly killing his son, brother and five other relatives.

A family of seven people was killed in another air raid on an area near Al-Jamaliyeh, and a van driver was also killed when another missile struck nearby.

It was the first helicopter-borne assault deep inside Lebanon since the start of the war.

"We have carried out this operation to prove that we can hit everywhere in Lebanon," the Israeli military's chief of staff, General Dan Halutz, told reporters in the northern border town of Kiryat Shmona, a frequent target of Hizbullah rockets.

Meanwhile, Israeli warplanes roared back into full-scale action, destroying two bridges in Northern Lebanon and killing three Lebanese soldiers in the Southern port city of Sidon. Six civilians died in air strikes elsewhere.

Battles raged between Hizbullah fighters and Israeli troops in South Lebanon, especially around the villages of Aita Shaab and Kfar Kila, where there was intense Israeli shelling and air strikes, a source with the UN peacekeeping force said.

The source said Israeli forces were present in five areas of the South and troops had landed by helicopter during the night near the southeastern border village of Mais al-Jabal.

An Israeli military spokesman said that some 7,000

troops were engaged in fighting with Hizbullah inside Lebanon.

Lebanese security sources said the Israelis had captured a hilltop at Al-Aweida overlooking several villages, including Kfar Kila and Adayseh, where fighting has raged this week.

Five Israeli soldiers were wounded in clashes with Hizbullah fighters in South Lebanon on Wednesday, the army said. Three of the soldiers were wounded, including one seriously, in fighting near the village of Mhaibib, an army spokesman said. The other two were wounded near the border village of Aita al-Shaab, where three Israeli soldiers were killed and 25 wounded in clashes with Hizbullah the previous day.

At least 750,000 Lebanese, almost a quarter of the population, have been driven from their homes. Olmert listed the flight of civilians from the South as among the accomplishments of the Israeli military campaign.

At least 828 people in Lebanon, almost all of them civilians, and 55 Israelis, most of them soldiers, have been killed in the conflict, now entering its fourth week. - Agencies