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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Israelis bomb U.N. post

Paul Richter and Ken Ellingwood Los Angeles Times

JERUSALEM – Israeli warplanes bombarded a U.N. post in southern Lebanon on Tuesday, killing four peace observers in a strike that Secretary-General Kofi Annan termed “apparently deliberate.”

The bombing capped a violent day that included the death of a 15-year-old Israeli girl from a Hezbollah rocket in a northern Galilee town, and renewed Israeli airstrikes in and around Beirut.

United Nations officials said their observation post near the village of Khiyam took a direct hit late Tuesday in an Israeli airstrike. Four members of the mission were killed. Their names and nationalities were not immediately released.

Annan flew to Rome to meet with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and diplomats from other nations on the Lebanon crisis. He said he was “shocked and deeply distressed” by what he said was the “apparently deliberate” targeting of the post by the Israeli army.

Annan said he had received personal assurances from Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that U.N. positions would be spared, and the U.N. force commander for south Lebanon, Gen. Alain Pellegrini, had been in repeated contact with Israeli officers to ensure the post’s protection.

U.S. officials labeled the attack “a terrible tragedy” and said they were told by the Israelis that it was an accident.

There was no immediate statement from the Israeli military, but Israel’s ambassador to the United States said the incident was under investigation, and reacted sharply to Annan’s allegation that the strike was deliberate.

“I think this kind of rhetoric is deplorable, it’s outrageous, and I hope he will apologize for that,” Ambassador Daniel Ayalon said on CNN’s “The Situation Room.”

He accused Hezbollah militants of positioning rocket launchers beside U.N. sites, a practice that has been reported by U.N. officials in recent days.

Hezbollah commander Sheik Hassan Nasrallah exhibited new defiance late Tuesday. In a televised address, he said his organization would not submit to “humiliating” conditions imposed by the international community for a cease-fire, and threatened attacks even deeper into Israel.

Referring to a “new period” in the 15-day-old conflict, he said Hezbollah would strike beyond the port of Haifa, Israel’s third largest city, where scores of rockets have been falling by the dozens.

“We will choose the time when we will move beyond – beyond Haifa,” Nasrallah said.

The U.N. deaths come as Western nations were set to meet today in Rome to discuss a possible cease-fire, response to the growing humanitarian crisis in Lebanon and a possible international peacekeeping force.

The Bush administration’s stance that Israel should be allowed to deal a more decisive blow to Hezbollah before any cease-fire did not budge Tuesday. Rice, in Jerusalem, stood by Olmert as he pledged to “carry on the fight” against Hezbollah. Later, she traveled to Rome to join European and Arab diplomats in hastily called crisis talks. Rice visited the West Bank city of Ramallah on Tuesday, and again turned aside calls from the Lebanese for an immediate cease-fire. She said an “enduring” peace was more important and possible only with the disarming of Hezbollah.

“It is time for a new Middle East,” she said, with Olmert nodding approvingly at her side. “And to those who do not want a new Middle East, we say we will prevail, they will not.”

“Israel is determined to carry on the fight against Hezbollah,” Olmert said. “We will stop them. We will not hesitate to take the most severe measures against those who are aiming thousands of missiles and missiles against innocent civilians for one purpose – to kill them.”

Henry A. Crumpton, the State Department’s coordinator for counterterrorism, said Tuesday he believed the Israeli response was “in some ways just beginning,” noting that Israel’s military still has made only limited progress in degrading Hezbollah capabilities.

Ground fighting continued Tuesday, with Israeli armor and infantry battling guerrillas for control of the Lebanese village of Bint Jbeil. By the end of the day, field commanders said they had seized the town, the largest in the border region and considered by Israel to be a Hezbollah headquarters.

The Israeli military said 20 to 30 Hezbollah gunmen were killed in the fighting around Bint Jbeil on Tuesday. An Israeli soldier was wounded in a fresh gunfight around Maroun el-Ras, a hilltop village about 1 1/2 miles north of the border, near the Israeli community of Avivim.

Israeli forces were also expanding their attack to other stretches of the border. Army convoys could be seen hauling tanks and bulldozers to a number of areas that have not yet seen large concentrations of forces. Israeli artillery shelled Lebanese villages north of Metulla, at the northern tip of the upper Galilee. Anticipating Hezbollah reprisals, Metulla municipal officials told residents to leave or seek refuge in bomb shelters.

Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz said his forces were continuing to carve out a “security strip” that he said Israel would maintain as a no-go zone until the eventual deployment of multinational forces – something that is far from decided.

Despite Israel’s ground offensive, heavy shelling and airstrikes, Hezbollah fired more than 90 rockets over the border into northern Israel on Tuesday, one of which killed a 15-year-old girl in the village of Maghar, a Druse community near the Sea of Galilee. Three others were wounded, one of them seriously.

Sixteen rockets plunged into the port city of Haifa, which has come under regular attack for more than a week. The military says that Haifa is being targeted from the southern Lebanon city of Tyre, which has been pummeled daily by Israeli war planes.

After a two-day respite, Beirut was pounded by new airstrikes Tuesday. At least four heavy blasts echoed over the city, and gray and black clouds billowed from the southern edge of the city, a predominantly Shiite, pro-Hezbollah community that has suffered massive damage in bombardments over the past two weeks.