Battle at Lebanon border takes toll on Israeli soldiers

ON THE ISRAEL-LEBANON BORDER — The heavy guns thundered before dawn Monday, sending deadly shells crashing down into the Lebanese border town and paving the way for the advancing Israeli tanks and troops.

By daybreak, bloody and bruised soldiers, shock etched deep in their faces, were streaming back over the border into Israel.

The incessant crackle of gunfire pierced the air as explosions over the hills surrounding Bint Jbail kicked up plumes of gray smoke. All the while, tanks rolled back into Israel, ferrying the wounded over the rocky, barren landscape.

Two Israeli soldiers were killed and at least 20 were wounded Monday, the army said, as guerrillas in the town, a Hezbollah stronghold, issued a withering barrage of bullets, anti-tank missiles and mortar shells.

Maj. Gen. Gadi Eizenkot, chief of operations for the Israeli Defense Force, said 100 to 200 Hezbollah fighters were fortified inside the town, while much of the civilian population had fled. Hezbollah, he said, suffered dozens of casualties.

As the tanks, doubling up as battlefield ambulances, crossed a breach in the electric border fence, they were met by medics waiting for the Israeli casualties.

One by one, the wounded were carried out on stretchers. One young soldier had blood streaming down his leg, which was bound with a tourniquet. Another lay still on a stretcher, only his twitching legs indicating that he was alive.

Having brought back his wounded comrades, a tank driver sat on the turret clutching his head between his gloved hands and crying while two crew members tried to console him.

Ambulances rushed the wounded over roads dug up by tank tracks. They drove past fields left charred and barren by fires from hundreds of Hezbollah rockets and through the empty streets of ghost towns — their inhabitants hiding in bomb shelters.

Helicopters airlifted the seriously wounded out of the area. The two soldiers were killed as they worked to evacuate soldiers wounded earlier — some by misdirected fire from Israeli forces, the military said.

Another tank crew on the border said the Hezbollah fighters they faced in the bitter battle for the village of Maroun al-Ras in Lebanon were tough and skilled.

The commander of the Merkava tank, Lieutenant Ohad — only first names were allowed for security reasons — said, with a distinct lack of swagger, "they were very good."

As his tank entered the village just before sunrise last Thursday in the fiercest battle to date, it was hit by an anti-tank missile. The tank's gunner was wounded.

Fire was coming from every direction. "When the fighting started the opposition was very strong," he said. Gradually, in street-to-street fighting the Israelis gained the upper hand, but not before five of its soldiers were killed there.

Since Israel began its incursions last week, it has found Hezbollah in south Lebanon well dug in, tactically deployed and highly committed. Although the Israeli Defense Force denies it, some military-affairs experts say it has been a harder, slower-moving slog than originally anticipated.

Israel launched its operation in Lebanon after Hezbollah guerrillas killed three soldiers and captured two others in a cross-border raid July 12. The ensuing fighting has killed at least 384 people in Lebanon and 40 Israelis.

Information from The Philadelphia Inquirer is included in this report.