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Hizbollah to retaliate Israeli raids

BEIRUT: Iranian-backed Hizbollah guerrillas said on Tuesday they would respond to Israeli air raids on civilian targets in Lebanon overnight by attacking northern Israeli settlements as well as the Jewish state's occupation zone.

"We know that residents of the (Israeli) northern settlements are in hideouts at the time they should be paying for the criminal policy of their prime minister (Ehud Barak)," a Hizbollah statement said.

"Last night's Zionist aggression will not protect troops of the occupation zone. The occupation soldiers will remain steady targets for the bombs, rockets and ambushes of our fighters."

Israeli aircraft plunged most of Lebanon into darkness in strikes that destroyed three power stations on the edge of Beirut, in the eastern Bekaa valley and in the far north.

Seven civilians were injured.

The raids were the most violent on Lebanon since last June when similar Israeli air strikes killed more than 60 people and destroyed important infrastructure.

Israel said the new attacks were mounted in retaliation for the killing by Hizbollah of five Israeli soldiers in south Lebanon over the last two weeks.

Hizbollah, backed by Iran and Syria, is among Lebanese guerrilla organisations waging a war of attrition to drive Israel from a 15-km deep zone it set up inside south Lebanon in 1985.

The Israeli attack prompted swift condemnation from Syria, the dominant foreign power in Lebanon with 35,000 troops stationed in the country.

"Barak has wasted opportunities for peace and pushed the region towards a scenario where all options are open," Syrian state radio said on Tuesday.

Beirut's pro-Syrian As-Safir newspaper said Israel deliberately chose civilian targets to destroy the prospects of an Israeli-Syrian peace, disregarding unwritten rules that had governed the low-density war in the south since 1996.

"Last night Israel blasted the table of peace talks with Syria and severely violated the 1996 April Understanding," As-Safir said in an editorial.

Syrian-Israeli peace talks were called off last month. Syria had demanded an Israeli commitment to withdraw entirely from the Golan heights captured in 1967 and Israel said it wanted to discuss normalisation of ties.

"The raids represent the end of the so-called peace track launched by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and the beginning of a war on all Arab negotiators to change the rules of negotiations," As-Safir said.

Fighting in south Lebanon has been mostly subject to a four-year-old U.S.-brokered understanding that in theory banned attacks on or from civilian areas. The April Understanding ended a prolonged Israeli bombardment of Lebanon in 1996.-Reuters