Hezbollah launches longer-range rockets

TYRE, Lebanon – Hezbollah launched a new kind of rocket Friday that made the deepest strike yet into Israel, rattling Israelis as their warplanes and artillery targeted guerrillas in attacks on apartment buildings and roads.

Lebanese officials said about 12 civilians died in the day’s fighting; Israel said it killed 26 militants, raising to about 230 the total number killed in the campaign.

Hezbollah’s launching of the new weapon unnerved Israelis, 500,000 of whom are already living in northern shelters because of rocket bombardments. The rocket firing was also likely to escalate a conflict now in its 18th day.

The guerrillas said they used the Khaibar-1 to strike the Israeli town of Afula.Five of the rockets crashed into empty fields outside Afula, causing no injuries.

Israel said the Khaibar-1 rockets were renamed, Iranian-made Fajr-5s. They have four times the power and range of Katyusha rockets, making them able to hit Tel Aviv’s northern outskirts.

Hundreds of Katyushas have hit northern Israel in the current fighting, including 96 on Friday, one of which hit a hospital.

A top U.N. peacekeeping official, political affairs officer Ryszard Morczynski, said he thought the war could continue until the end of August and voiced fears Israel would flatten Lebanon’s southern villages and destroy the port of Tyre “neighborhood by neighborhood” if Hezbollah rockets keep slamming into the Jewish state.

In Beirut, Hezbollah signed on to a proposed peace package that includes strengthening an international force in south Lebanon and disarming the guerrillas, the government said.

The agreement, reached at a Cabinet meeting, was the first time that Hezbollah has agreed to a proposal for ending the crisis that includes the deployment of international forces.

The package falls short of American and Israeli demands in that it calls for an immediate cease-fire before working out details of a force and includes other conditions.

The uncertainty allowed the offensive to persist with a new dimension of destruction emerging – the environment.

Beaches in Beirut were black with oil spilled from a power station that was blasted by Israel two weeks ago and was still burning. In the south, workers dug through the rubble of bombed houses, looking for bodies.

Late Friday, the Israeli army said it killed 26 Hezbollah guerrillas in fighting for the Shiite town of Bint Jbail. The army did not report Israeli casualties, but Israel Radio said six soldiers were wounded. Hezbollah has verified 35 guerrilla casualties. The competing claims could not be resolved independently.