Israel decides against expanding incursion, calls reserves

JERUSALEM – Israel's government decided today against expanding its offensive against Hezbollah but called up at least 30,000 troops to begin training for duty in Lebanon. Hezbollah's leader reportedly was to meet with Syrian and Iranian officials in Damascus.

The decision came as Israel's Justice minister said that world leaders, in failing to call for an immediate cease-fire during a Rome summit, gave Israel a green light to push harder to wipe out the Lebanese guerrillas.

The high-level conference of key Mideast players in Rome ended Wednesday in disagreement: Most European leaders urged an immediate cease-fire but the United States was willing to give Israel more time to punish Hezbollah and ensure an international peacekeeping force can move into south Lebanon.

"We received yesterday at the Rome conference permission from the world .... to continue the operation, this war, until Hezbollah won't be located in Lebanon and until it is disarmed," Israeli Justice Minister Haim Ramon told Israel's Army Radio.

"Everyone understands that a victory for Hezbollah is a victory for world terror," said Ramon, believed to be close to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

The European Union said today that Ramon's interpretation of the Rome meeting result was "totally wrong," and that Mideast hostilities should stop now.

Israel launched attacks in Gaza after Palestinian Hamas-linked militants there snatched an Israeli soldier on June 25. As that conflict raged, Hezbollah grabbed two soldiers in a July 12 cross-border raid, sparking Israel's massive assault on Lebanon.

So far, 17 days of bombardment and recent, intense ground fighting have been unable to stop Hezbollah rocket attacks. The Israeli military warned Lebanese in the south today that their villages would be "totally destroyed" if missiles are fired from them.

The warning, aired on Al-Mashriq radio, also told Lebanese not to use the road from Qleileh — near the Mediterranean coast — to Houlah in eastern Lebanon across the border from Israel's Kiryat Shmona.

Hezbollah has fired more than 1,400 rockets into Israel during the offensive, including 48 today.

Israeli airstrikes today pounded roads and suspected Hezbollah residences in the south and east, as well as a Lebanese army base in the north, while artillery and warplanes barraged the border region where ground fighting continued.

With cease-fire efforts stalemated, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she was prepared to make a second tour of the Middle East but did not specify when.

"I am more than happy to go back," Rice said, if her efforts can "move toward a sustainable cease-fire that would end the violence." She spoke in Malaysia after attending the Rome conference. Rice held talks in Beirut and Jerusalem earlier in the week.

Meanwhile, a top Iranian envoy was in Syria for talks on the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict — a gathering of the Lebanese guerrilla's two key sponsors, according Kuwaiti and Iranian news reports.

Iran's Mehr news agency said Ali Larijani, secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, was in Damascus for meetings on the crisis, but gave no other details. Similar reports were carried by the Iranian Labor News Agency and the Fars agency.

Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah was take part in the meeting, which also will include Syrian President Hafez Assad, according to Kuwait's Al-Siyassah newspaper, known for its opposition to the Syrian regime.

It said the meeting was designed to discuss ways to maintain supplies to Hezbollah fighters with "Iranian arms flowing through Syrian territories."

During a session today with Israel's security Cabinet, Olmert said the goals of Israel's offensive are being met, participants of the meeting said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose details of the discussion.

The ministers said the call up of three additional reserve divisions, comprising thousands of soldiers, was meant to refresh troops in Lebanon, but the huge size of the mobilization raised questions about the military's overall strategy. One division has 12,000 to 15,000 soldiers.

In his interview with Army Radio, Ramon also said the Israeli air force must bomb villages before ground forces enter, suggesting that this would help prevent Israeli casualties in the future.

Asked whether entire villages should be flattened, he said: "These places are not villages. They are military bases in which Hezbollah people are hiding and from which they are operating."

Thousands of civilians are believed to be trapped in villages across the border region in southern Lebanon, according to humanitarian officials. Americans who escaped a village near the epicenter of the ground fighting said Wednesday many U.S. citizens were still there.

The call for greater firepower came after Israel suffered its heaviest casualty toll in a single battle on Wednesday, with nine soldiers killed and 25 wounded in house-to-house fighting in Bint Jbail, a border town that Israeli troops have been trying for five days to wrest from Hezbollah guerrillas.

Across the south today, Israeli airstrikes hit roads and houses, many believed to belong to Hezbollah activists. The houses were mostly deserted, but such strikes have caused casualties among nearby residents. A Lebanese policeman was killed when an Israeli missile struck his car as he drove in the eastern city of Zahle, security officials said.

Israeli jets carried out more than 30 bombing runs in the highland, apple-growing region of Iqlim al-Tuffah, striking empty houses of alleged Hezbollah activists. The strikes caused a number of casualties, but fighting kept ambulances and civil defense crews from the areas, security officials and witnesses said.

Other strikes hit the nearby southern market town of Nabatiyeh, wounding at least three people, officials said. A hit on a road in Rayak, a few miles from the Lebanese-Syrian border, wounded two soldiers and a civilian, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to make statements to the media.

At least 423 people have been killed in Lebanon — including 376 civilians reported by the Health Ministry and security officials. The deaths of soldiers Wednesday brought to 51 the number of Israelis killed in the campaign, according to the military.

Israel said Wednesday that it intends to damage Hezbollah and establish a "security zone" stretching 1.2 miles into Lebanon from the Israeli border, maintained by an international force. Free of guerrillas, such a zone would prevent Hezbollah from carrying out cross-border raids like the one that triggered the current offensive.