JERSUALEM – Israeli commandos stormed a Lebanese hospital yesterday, fighting off a swarm of Hezbollah guerrillas in one of the fiercest battles in the 3-week-old war – and snatching a high-ranking honcho with the terror group, officials said.
A source said senior Hezbollah official Mohammad Yazbik was the target of the attack in the city of Baalbek, located some 80 miles north of the Israeli boarder and situated in the Bekaa Valley just 10 miles from Syria.
A Hezbollah spokesman denied that the commandos had successfully snagged Yazbik – or anyone else inside the hospital – although witnesses had seen several patients whisked away by Israeli soldiers into several helicopters.
CNN reported that Israeli soldiers had entered Dar al-Hikma Hospital, checking the ID cards of everyone who worked inside.
Witnesses said a fierce battle around the hospital ensued, including Israeli soldiers firing assault rifles, grenade-launchers and machine guns.
Israeli helicopters joined the battle, firing rockets at several targets near and around the hospital.
Israeli officials gave no details of the operation, but the Web site of the Israeli daily Ha’aretz confirmed that “helicopters put down [military] commandos near Baalbek,” but added no further details.
Hezbollah officials claimed several Israeli soldiers were trapped inside the hospital, but Israeli officials said no soldiers had been trapped, or injured, in the raid.
The group’s chief spokesman, Hussein Rahal, said Israeli paratroopers had landed near the hospital and had taken on Hezbollah fighters.
“Israeli commandos were brought to the hospital by a helicopter,” he said. “They entered the hospital and are trapped inside as our fighters opened fire on them.” The fighting intensified after four hours when another Israeli unit was dropped in the outskirts of the city – considered Hezbollah’s headquarters – staging more than 10 bombing runs around the building, witnesses said.
The Israeli warplanes later dropped flares over the city, while heavy fighting continued on the ground. Witnesses said the hospital was eventually hit in an Israeli airstrike and was burning.
The battle grew bigger with the help of Israeli warplanes, which staged more than 10 bombing runs around the building early today as well as on the hills east and north of the city.
Baalbek is a city strewn with Roman ruins as well as the barracks of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards when they trained Hezbollah guerrillas there in the 1980s.
The last time Israeli soldiers were known to have gone that far on the ground into Lebanon was in 1994 when they abducted Lebanese guerrilla leader Mustafa Dirani, hoping to use him to get information about a missing Israeli airman named Ron Arad.
Dirani was released in a prisoner exchange 10 years later.
The fighting in Baalbek – and across pockets of southern Lebanon – was another sign of the war’s continuing escalation. It came as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said an agreement on how to end the conflict was possible within days, not weeks.
Israeli officials indicated the long-delayed ground offensive – which included some 10,000 soldiers – was designed to clear the area of terrorists until a cease-fire is declared and an international peacekeeping force arrives.
Despite mounting civilian deaths, President Bush continued his support of Israel and was pressing for a U.N. resolution linking a cease-fire with a broader plan for peace in theMideast.
Staking out a different approach, European Union ministers called for an “immediate cessation of hostilities” followed by efforts to agree on a sustainable cease-fire.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert for the first time spoke of a truce yesterday, saying, “We are at the beginning of a political process that in the end will bring a ceasefire.” But in Washington, his deputy prime minister, Shimon Peres, said last night that Israel’s military campaign could go on for weeks, despite international pressure for a cease-fire sooner.
In other developments:
* Israel resumed airstrikes early today. The army said it hopes to push Hezbollah far enough north into Lebanon so that most of the guerrillas’ rockets cannot reach the Jewish state.
The strikes hit Hezbollah strongholds and supply lines from one end of Lebanon to the other – despite Israel’s pledge to suspend such attacks for another day in response to world outrage over the killing of 56 Lebanese in a weekend bombing.
* What could be the bloodiest battle of the war erupted in Aita aShaab, a Hezbollah stronghold less than a mile inside the Lebanese border.
Israel said three of its paratroopers and at least 10 Hezbollah fighters were killed in the town, from which guerrillas launched the cross-border raid that triggered the war three weeks ago.
Another 25 Israelis were wounded, officials said.
* Israel also launched a broad land assault on several towns inside the border.
“We have so far now about six efforts running inside Lebanon . . .
brigade-size or even bigger than brigade-size efforts in each one of them,” said Brig. Gen. Shuki Shahur, head of the northern command.
An Israeli brigade usually numbers at least 1,000 soldiers.
* Israeli officials said 400 Hezbollah members had been killed and several of the group’s headquarters had been destroyed since the war began.
* Terrorist rockets and mortar fire fell on several northern Israeli towns, including an empty kindergarten.
No casualties were reported.
* Israel temporarily lifted its naval blockade of the Lebanese coast to let in two oil tankers to supply Lebanon’s fuel-starved power plants, according to Lebanon’s minister of transportation, Mohammed Safadi.
The easing of the blockade came only 24 hours before the power plants’ supply would have been exhausted, threatening to darken the country and cut supplies to hospitals and other critical facilities, said Safadi.
Israeli jets also dropped leaflets north of the Litani River yesterday, urging residents to leave.
One Israeli official told The Post that Israel intends to keep control of a buffer zone up to one mile deep along the border even after an international peacekeeping force is in the field.
Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz warned that the fighting may escalate.
“No one knows if a cease-fire will take place in 10 days, or more or less,” he said. “The other side is preparing steps according to this timetable.”
With Post Wire Services
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Map graphic
* Proposed buffer zone
* Aita a-Shaab, Lebanon – Pitched battle kills at least 3 Israeli paratroopers and 10 Hezbollah fighters
* Sidon, Lebanon – Three Lebanese killed in airstrike
* Baalbek, Lebanon – Israeli commandos raid hospital and capture Hezbollah big
* Taibeh, Lebanon – Israelis seize Hezbollah command center
* Matzuva, Nahariya and Shlomi, Israel – Hit by Hezbollah rockets
Battle of Baalbek
* Israeli commandos storm a Lebanese hospital in the Lebanese city of Baalbek and reportedly snatch a senior Hezbollah official.
* A source says Mohammad Yazbik could have been the target of the attack, but a spokesman for the terror group denies that the commandos snagged him.
* Witnesses say there was fierce fighting with assault rifles, grenade-launchers and machineguns around the hospital. Israeli helicopters fire rockets at several targets near and around the hospital.
* A Hezbollah source says several Israeli soldiers are trapped inside the hospital.
* Fighting intensifies after four hours when another Israeli unit is dropped near the city, staging more than 10 bombing runs around the building.