[BRIEF NOTE] Two News Items

[rfmcdonald]

From the Canadian Press, 18 July 2006:

Israel will do whatever it can to ensure safe passage for Canadians fleeing Lebanon but Israel's ambassador warns there's no guarantee they won't be targeted by Islamic guerrillas.

Indeed, Alan Baker suggested Tuesday that Hezbollah, the militant Islamic group that controls much of southern Lebanon, might deliberately target Canadian refugees in order to provoke an international incident.

[. . .]

Asked if he believes Hezbollah would deliberately target fleeing foreigners to create an international incident, Baker said: "Absolutely.

"Look, why do they put their artillery launching things in the back gardens of private homes? In order to provoke a response by Israel which would kill innocent people, including, as happened, eight Canadians."

Seven Canadians were killed over the weekend and another has since succumbed to wounds suffered during Israeli attacks on Hezbollah sites in Lebanon.

That said, Baker added that he doesn't think Hezbollah "has any reason to harm Canadians" in particular.

"The opposite. They should want that Canadians won't be annoyed with them."

From The Globe and Mail, 25 July 2006:

Like most residents of her village, Wafa Mahfouz was hiding with her family when she heard and felt the explosion 500 metres away that killed a Canadian family. Eight days later, she was still angry and confused about why it had happened.

"What was the guilt of those Canadians? They were not Hezbollah," she shouted, referring to the Islamic militia Israel says it was targeting in the hard-hit village of Aytaroun, in south Lebanon. She and other villagers say they knew the Montreal side of the Al-Akhrass family only by sight.

Details of the attack on the Al-Akhrass home started to emerge for the first time yesterday, as bedraggled residents of Aytaroun began to arrive at an elementary school-turned-refugee camp in this Christian town on the outskirts of Beirut. All said that while Hezbollah had fired rockets into northern Israel from the olive groves and tobacco fields that surround the village, none were fired from close to civilian homes, as Israel contends.

[. . .]

The Israeli army has called Aytaroun, a village of 10,000 that swells to 15,000 in the summer, according to residents, "a launching ground for missiles fired at Israel," and says it warned villagers that they would be at risk if they were near missile-launching sites. The day of that particular attack, residents say, the Israelis had been firing at Hezbollah positions around the village with artillery rounds. The Al-Akhrass home, a two-storey concrete building, was destroyed by an air strike in the afternoon, and villagers say that either they or one of their immediate neighbours seem to have been specifically targeted. It was the only attack inside the village that day. Two other homes were destroyed by the same bomb, but both of them were empty.

After hearing the blast that blew out windows over a wide radius, Manal Hassan al-Allawiyeh and other villagers ran to the scene of the Al-Akhrass family home and with their bare hands dug frantically at the rubble .

There was little left of the structure, or of the more than a dozen people who had been inside. "We ran toward the homes to try and save them, but we found only parts of people," Ms. al-Allawiyeh said. "We recovered six to eight bodies, but they were all in pieces."

She and other villagers believe there are still several bodies trapped in the ruins of the home.

Residents said the 11 deceased were buried in a quick funeral. At least three others were wounded.

The full death count in Aytaroun is impossible to determine, since the village is now the effective front line in the confrontation between Israel and Hezbollah.

Israel 8, Hezbollah 0.