Israel steps up raids after Haifa attack

Lebanese men carry an injured boy out of a building that holds the Lebanese Interior Ministry's civil defense center of Tyre, after it was attacked by an Israeli warplane at the southern Lebanon city of Tyre, Sunday, July 16, 2006. Israeli airstrikes reduced entire apartment buildings to rubble and knocked out electricity in swaths of the Lebanese capital Sunday, and Israel dramatically escalated the ferocity of its campaign after Hezbollah rockets hit the northern city of Haifa. (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)


July 16, 2006

By HAMZA HENDAWI and LEE KEATH, Associated Press Writers

BEIRUT, Lebanon - Hezbollah and Israel traded rocket and missile barrages without letup for a fifth day Sunday, as the war that has suddenly flared in the Middle East showed no sign of easing. Hezbollah rockets struck deep inside Israel, killing eight people in the northern city of Haifa, and Israel answered with even more lethal blows across Lebanon and into the Bekaa Valley near Syria.

The toll on both sides rose to at least 178, including three Lebanese soldiers and many civilians, as strikes continued into Monday. In addition to the Israeli victims at a rail repair facility in Haifa, eight Canadians vacationing at their family village in Lebanon died in an Israeli raid, and a sea-launched missile killed at least nine people at a civil defense building in the southern Lebanese port of Tyre.

Israel warned of massive retaliation after the Haifa attack, and accused Iran and Syria of providing the weaponry used. Military officials said the missiles were more advanced — with longer range and heavier warheads — than the hundreds of rockets the guerrillas had rained on northern Israel earlier. Read more...