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Israeli jets, artillery pound south Lebanon

TYRE, (Lebanon): Israeli warplanes and artillery pounded south Lebanon on Saturday as Israel's blitz against Hizbollah guerrillas entered its third day, U.N. sources in south Lebanon and security sources said.

The pro-Iranian guerrillas fighting to oust Israeli occupation troops from south Lebanon replied with a barrage of Katyusha rockets, security sources said. It was not immediately known if any of rockets slammed into northern Israel.

In Beirut, Foreign Minister Faris Bouez said Lebanon would lodge a complaint at the United Nations against the Israeli blitz, which began on Thursday in response to Hizbollah (Party of God) attacks on Israeli troops in south Lebanon and towns in northern Israel.

By noon (0900 GMT), Israeli aircraft had launched a dozen raids, firing rockets into at least 11 southern villages.

Israeli artillery also continued intensive bombardment of southern villages from positions in northern Israel and an Israeli-occupied border strip in south Lebanon.

"There is heavy shelling all over areas north of the Israeli border zone," a source with UNIFIL, a U.N. peacekeeping force in south Lebanon, told Reuters.

Israeli gunners had fired about 3,000 rounds into Lebanon over a 24-hour period up to 6 a.m. (0300 GMT) on Saturday, hitting dozens of villages and wrecking many homes, he said.

Security sources said some of the 49 villages Israel said it would hit were almost empty after about 100,000 people fled northwards to escape the bombardment. Eighty percent of the inhabitants of some villages had left, they said.

But four people were wounded in the first air raid at dawn on the village of Jbal al-Botom near the southern port of Tyre, the sources said. This brought the casualties in three days of bombing and shelling in Lebanon to 15 dead and 43 wounded.

Security sources said overnight shelling killed a civilian and wounded four in the south.

Bad weather over northern Israel, south Lebanon and Beirut caused a brief lull in the Israeli blitz during the morning, but it resumed with renewed ferocity as the skies began to clear before mid-day.

Hours after the first dawn air raid, rocket-firing jets hit Jbal al-Botm again and also raided the villages of Majdal Silm, Mahrouneh, Kafra, Yater, Zibqine and Siddiqine, all north of the Israeli-held south Lebanon zone, security sources said.

Hizbollah (Party of God) guerrillas, who are active in many of the stricken villages, fired five Katyusha rockets at northern Israel as the air raids continued, security sources said.

Sources with the South Lebanon Army (SLA), the local militia which helps Israel control its 15 km (nine miles) wide occupation zone, said three rockets exploded in the zone on the Lebanese side of the border with Israel.

It was not known whether the other two landed in Israel.

Security sources said the wounded in the Israeli shelling included a seven-year-old girl in the village of Qana and a 60-year-old woman and an elderly man in Qlaileh.

Israeli jets and helicopters made 16 raids in south Lebanon on Friday after warning civilians to leave the 49 towns and villages that it planned to bombard. Nine people, including four children, were killed by shellfire in one village.

Hizbollah guerrillas fired four salvos of Katyusha rockets into northern Israel on Friday, injuring four people in the border settlement of Kiryat Shmona.

Israeli helicopters also struck twice on Friday at Beirut's Shi'ite Moslem southern suburbs, striking at the capital for the second time in two days and hitting a Hizbollah building and a Syrian army anti-aircraft position. A Syrian soldier was killed and seven injured.-Reuter