Israel Retaliates Against Lebanon With Air Attacks on Power Plants

JERUSALEM —  Israeli jets struck at Lebanon early today, carrying out raids against power stations and a guerrilla arms depot in retaliation for Hezbollah rocket attacks that left one dead and more than two dozen injured in northern Israel.

The raids, which targeted power plants on the outskirts of Beirut and near the northern town of Tripoli, injured at least one person and plunged portions of the Lebanese capital into darkness, according to reports from Lebanon. Israel also destroyed a section of the main highway connecting Beirut with Damascus, the Syrian capital, in the Bekaa Valley, an Israeli army spokesman said.

Israel said the wide-scale strikes came in retaliation for a Hezbollah rocket attack Thursday evening on northern Israel. An Israeli soldier driving near the border was killed in the barrage, which injured at least 26 others, most of them slightly. Cars and buildings were set ablaze and thousands of residents of Kiryat Shemona and other northern border communities were sent racing for bomb shelters.

The rocket salvos, the heaviest cross-border barrage in nearly a year, in turn came after a string of attacks in recent days by Israel and its militia allies on one side and the Iranian-backed Hezbollah guerrillas on the other. In the most serious incident, two Lebanese women were killed earlier Thursday in shelling that Israel’s army commander described as “unauthorized” firing by the South Lebanon Army, an Israeli-trained and financed militia.

Israel’s strikes, the third against Lebanese infrastructure in the last year, followed within hours, soon after Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak paid a visit to Kiryat Shemona, the community hit hardest by the rockets.

“No country on Earth will be ready to accept salvos of Katyushas on its civilian centers,” Barak told reporters during the visit to Kiryat Shemona. “Israel will not allow it to happen and we will have to respond, and we will know how to respond.”

The escalation comes barely two months before the deadline Barak set for pulling Israeli troops out of southern Lebanon. The Israeli army invaded Lebanon in 1978 and created a 9-mile-deep buffer zone along the border in 1985 to deter guerrilla attacks on northern Israel.

The latest exchanges are certain to prompt new concerns in Israel amid growing signs of public anxiety over the government’s promise to meet the July 7 target date for the withdrawal--even in the absence of a peace accord with Syria, the main power broker in Lebanon. And with Beirut again in darkness, they are likely to prompt new worries in Lebanon as well.

Peace talks between Israel and Syria broke down in January and show no signs of resuming.

The violence also came against a backdrop of international discussions over Israel’s plans to end its occupation. On Thursday, a United Nations envoy was in Beirut to discuss the withdrawal with Lebanon’s leaders. The envoy, Terje Roed-Larsen of Norway, later released a statement saying he was encouraged by his meetings.

Given the sensitive climate, Israeli analysts said Barak faced a dilemma in deciding how strongly to strike back. Israel hopes to gain international support for its withdrawal, but it is reluctant to appear weak in the face of Hezbollah attacks for fear of prompting more barrages on northern communities. Israeli leaders have vowed to retaliate harshly for any attacks after the army pulls out of Lebanon.

But Thursday’s Hezbollah barrage also appeared aimed at sending a warning to Israel that the guerrilla group, which views the withdrawal as a victory, still intends to make the pullout as difficult as possible.

The violence was the most serious since June, when two Israelis and at least eight Lebanese civilians were killed in attacks that also led to Israel’s destruction of several Lebanese power plants. After Hezbollah killed seven Israeli soldiers in February, Israeli air raids left more Lebanese civilians wounded and more infrastructure damaged.

The recent incidents began with the bombing of a Lebanese village Wednesday, which Israel said was a mistake. The bombing left more than a dozen injured, including the family of a local Shiite Muslim militia leader. Then an elderly Lebanese woman and her daughter were killed early Thursday, evidently when a South Lebanon Army tank fired into a nearly deserted village on the edge of the buffer zone.

Then came Hezbollah’s Katyusha rockets, estimated to number anywhere from 16 to 60.

Most of the injuries in Kiryat Shemona were reported to be minor, including shock and cuts from flying glass and shrapnel as residents hurried into the shelters. The exploding rockets set several cars on fire and damaged buildings.

Meanwhile, angry and frightened border residents urged the government to strike back harshly.

“I’m appealing to Barak,” Nathan Cohen, a resident of Moshav Shomera, a border community, told Israel TV. “We’re hostages here. Why aren’t we responding when they shoot at us? Why aren’t we shooting back?”