Israeli jets bomb Hezbollah bunker housing Hezbollah leaders.

[Swede]

I wonder if Sheik Hassan Nasrallah will pop up for his close up?

Israeli jets have dropped bombs on a bunker in southern Beirut where senior Hezbollah leaders were thought to be sheltering. Military officials said dozens of aircrafts dropped 23 tons of explosives on the bunker in the Bourj al-Barajneh section of southern Beirut.

http://www.imemc.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=20185&Itemid=173

[ewagner]

1. 23 tons?

Whoa!

Not many survived that.....

[tocqueville]

2. According to Haaretz/Reuters it's a flop

http://www.haaretz.com/

The officials said the bunker was in the Bourj al-Barajneh section of southern Beirut.

Hezbollah said in a statement on Thursday that none of its leaders were killed during the strike. "Hezbollah denies that any of its leaders or personnel were killed during the latest bombardment...in the southern suburb," the group said in the statement.

The building targeted in the raid was a mosque under construction and not a bunker housing as Israel claimed, the statement added

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/740251.html

[Swede]

4. Really? Sheik Hassan Nasrallah must be rehearsing for his TV address.

Or maybe he's in paradise.

[IndianaGreen]

11. Lots of Hezbollah in Brazil too!

Pat Buchanan: Why are the Lebanese dying at a 20-1 ration compared to Israelis?

Even a Fascist like Buchanan recognizes genocide!

IAF strike kills Brazilian businessman

A Brazilian businessman was killed on Wednesday in an IAF missile attack on a factory he owned in Lebanon, the seventh Brazilian known to have been killed in an eight-day onslaught, Brazil's Agencia Estado reported.

Dib Barakat, a 60-year-old businessman from Sao Paulo, was inside his furniture factory in Sultan Yacob, in the Bekaa Valley, when three missiles struck just after 8 a.m., Agencia Estado said.

A witness said the Israeli strike appeared to be prompted by the arrival of truck loaded with wood for the factory. Five other people were wounded.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/740251.html

[Zynx]

13. Israel has the ability to wipe Lebanon off the map in a day.

Genocide? That is, in the best light possible, hyperbole run wild. At worst it is demagoguery.

[IndianaGreen]

16. Might does not make right, as Hitler, Tojo, Napoleon, and others

found out, and as Bush will someday find out.

[Zynx]

34. That doesn't even make sense.

You are comparing the accidental deaths of 300 civillians to the intentional deaths at the hands of Hitler and Tojo of close to 100,000,000?

[cantstandbush]

17. And truth for sure. nt

[INDIA]

28. Bingo

Reminds me of people on the boards comparing Fallujah to Nanjing. Both actions are reprehensable, one just happens to be on a scale thousands of times larger.

How many times can you cry "genocide" or compare Israeli/U.S. actions to Hitler before it becomes a case of "The Boy Who Cried Wolf?"

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

25. FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK

Fuck. :cry:

[oneold1-4u]

3. Hopefully

They were all there and underground. A very good place for all who share love of death and terror.

[IndianaGreen]

5. Anyone remembers the Baghdad bunker where Saddam was "hiding"

during the Gulf War? Somehow I am getting a tremendous sense of deja vu...

El-Amiriyyah…. … as it was reported ten years ago

(lead article, the Guardian, 15-2-91)

“… charred bodies continued to be pulled from the Baghdad bunker hit on Wednesday. Spain called for an international enquiry into the attack and an end to the blanket bombing of Iraq… The Bush administration fell into unusual disarray… up to a hundred “dual-use” civilian and military bunkers might be taken off the target list, Pentagon sources suggested… among the options being considered was a warning to Iraq that a potentially civilian target was to be hit. …President Bush was making none of his customary blizzard of phone calls to foreign leaders. He announced that he would leave early for a holiday weekend. The US insisted that the Stealth bomber attack was on “a legitimate military target, a command and control centre”.

(Independent, 15-2-91)

“The United States Air Force killed scores of civilians in a Baghdad bunker on Wednesday because it believed key Iraqi military personnel were sheltering inside, not because it thought the building was a command and control centre, according to a senior US military source…. The allies are now launching between 150 and 200 sorties a day against Baghdad, the source said, but pilots were reporting that they found themselves bombing the same target five or six times, even after the structure had been destroyed”

Robert Fisk

(Independent, 14-2-91)

“The death of at least 400 civilians in a Baghdad air-raid shelter did not seem to have ruptured the political consensus on the war in either London or Washington… the consensus between the Labour front bench and the Government held firm… There were angry Tory protests when George Galloway… told the Foreign Secretary (Douglas Hurd): ‘As you watched the television screen at lunchtime and saw the ribbons of women and children swept out of the air-raid shelter in Baghdad, some of the blood of these innocent civilians was on your hands. Will you stop bombing cities now?’

(Guardian, 15-2-91)

“Clare Short quit the opposition front bench… (saying) “she could not stick with it… it’s the nature of the bombing that I’m worried about. People not having water and food; it’s got nothing to do with the liberation of Kuwait.” A second front-bencher, Joan Ruddock (former leader of CND) decided to stay after pledging that she would not speak out on the Gulf war again.” … The Prime Minister, John Major, expressed regret yesterday over the civilian deaths in Baghdad but … backed the US assessment that there had been reason to believe the shelter was a legitimate military target.”

http://www.synergynet.co.uk/sheffield-iraq/articles/war-articles.htm

[leftchick]

7. The US killed a lot of innocents to get to Saddam

but it was to "keep us safe". :eyes:

[OKNancy]

6. Swede - LBN rules

state that you should use the origianl source and not reprinter or repackager.
This article was from english.aljazeera.net

No action on this one.... just an fyi for the future.

Thanks
OKNancy
LBN moderator

[Clarkie1]

8. I hope a lot of them were there, they killed them, civilians were not hurt

eom

[High Plains]

9. Such a worthy sentiment.

Can we extend it to the other party as well?

[IndianaGreen]

10. According to Lebanon's Prime Minister, Israel is a "savage war machine"

A woman reacts after her truck was
destroyed Wednesday by Israeli
warplanes in Hadath, Lebanon.


A man runs Wednesday from the
scene after an Israel airstrike
destroyed trucks in Hadath.

The conflict so far has caused "immeasurable loss" in Lebanon, Prime Minister Fouad Siniora said Wednesday. He again called for a cease-fire and denounced Israel as a "savage war machine" responsible for more than 300 deaths in Lebanon. (Watch as hospitals in Lebanon are overwhelmed with the wounded -- 2:23)

Another 1,000 people have been wounded and 500,000 displaced since hostilities began a week ago, Siniora said in a televised national address.

The Lebanese Internal Security Forces reported, however, that 216 people had been killed and 524 injured as of 8 p.m. (1 p.m. ET) Wednesday.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/07/19/mideast/index.html

[Warren Stupidity]

20. Do you really think that 23 tons of bombs

dropped in an urban area do not kill civilians? Why do you so eagerly desire death for others?

[rooboy]

12. This is after how many days of bombing civilians? n/t

[Zynx]

14. If Israel really wanted to kill civillians they could kill tens of 1000s a

day. This is not intentional.

[jonnyblitz]

15. I don't believe that anymore. nt

[spinnaker]

35. They killed more than 10 thousand in 82

Even Ronald Reagan expressed his concern then about their use of (American) cluster bombs in civilian areas.

[IndianaGreen]

18. Bombing hospitals and grain silos is not intentional?

Israel is doing to Lebanon what we did to Iraq. Do you think that the blue Star of David on those F-16s and the religion of the pilots makes it right to drop bombs on a densely populated city? If we condemned our own country for doing this in Iraq, why should we give Israel a pass for doing the same to Lebanon?

[Warren Stupidity]

21. So your theme here is that this is acceptable

because Israel could kill many more if it chose to do so? Have I got that right?

[daleo]

22. The reasoning doesn't follow

Suppose someone was charged with murder. It would hardly be a valid defense to say "but I could have killed the whole family - the fact that I only killed one person proves it must have been an accident".

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

26. Bee Eye Ann Gee Oh -nt

[adriennui]

24. there are DUers who believe israel

goes out of its way to kill civilians.....it's futile trying to convince them that they do everything possible to avoid it. of course the fact that terrorists employ human shields in order to up the civilian casualties simply eludes them.

[magellan]

27. Not at all

Why do you assume it's "either/or"? Just because someone is talking about needless Lebanese deaths doesn't mean they don't care about needless Israeli deaths. Some DUers ought to try and stop reading more into other DUers' posts than is offered.

I'm sure the large majority of DUers would agree that ALL needless civilian death is deplorable. It just happens that those deaths are happening at a ratio of nearly 10:1 in Lebanon versus Israel.

The truth on either side is that if you get in the way, you're dead.

[IndianaGreen]

29. Israel is as credible as our Pentagon when it comes to civilian casualties

I suggest you read, or listen to, Amy Goodman's interview with Robert Fisk, The Independent's premier Middle East correspondent, who also happens to make Beirut his home:

It amazes me -- I mean, living here in Beirut, as I have for 30 years. Here are the Lebanese people, sophisticated, educated, cosmopolitan, people who don't look like the Arab world, they look like us; I mean, people who could be quite at home on the streets of Paris or New York and London, and some of them are; people who read, who are very well educated; people who speak English fluently, French beautifully, and fluent Arabic, as well, of course; and who, when they die in such large numbers, the best we can produce is a call for restraint by the State Department and a claim by the British, our own dear Tony Blair, that the Israelis are using disproportionate force.

The exchange rate for neutral slaughter between Israel and here at the moment is now 1 to 10. 24 Israelis – I think 25 now -- to 242 Lebanese, many of whom, as I say, most of whom, but a far larger proportion of civilians. Many Beirut people were very moved Saturday when the Lebanese Beirut newspapers carried a very, very tragic picture of a young girl, a little girl -- must have been 4 or 5 years old -- near a place called Ter Hafra, lying dead in a field in her blue pajamas, looking, as I said in my newspaper, very similar to that terrifying picture from Poland in 1939 of a little Polish girl lying dead with her weeping sister beside her.

I did receive a phone call today from an Israeli woman living in the East Coast of the United States, who said she thought that what was being done to the Lebanese was unforgivable. I thought she was a very generous and good woman, saying she prayed for the Lebanese people and the Palestinians, and for the Israelis, of course.

But it's a tragedy of immense proportions, because it’s also tearing apart a country. In the last 24 hours we found the Israelis have turned to attacking a milk factory, Liban Lait -- it’s actually the producers of milk I drink every morning in my tea -- a paper box factory, for heaven’s sakes, hardly a terrorist target. We've already seen them smash up the runways of Beirut Airport and destroy part of the -- most of the lighthouse, the new Manara lighthouse, in Beirut. The Israelis today even attacked the factory which imports Procter & Gamble goods here. We've had an ambulance convoy, a convoy of new ambulances from the United Emirates, cross from Syria into Lebanon, got attacked from the air. It's an all-out war against the economy infrastructure of a country that was at last beginning to look modern again, after the 15 years of civil war, which cost 150,000 lives. And it's very sad to see.

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/07/19/1345257

[sendero]

30. yeah..

... they are hiding in power plants and milk processing plants. You are a moron.

[adriennui]

31. i don't appreciate being called a moron

have i called you an idiot? no. if you have constructive comments, fine.
name calling is a sign of an uneducated fool.

[Name removed]

32. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[SOS]

33. If the IDF is "doing everything possible" to avoid civilian casualties,

why did they announce that all fleeing pickup trucks will be hit with air strikes?
They are deliberately targeting fleeing civilians.

From today's NYT:

"In Srifa, a neighborhood was wiped out — 15 houses flattened, 21 people killed, 30 wounded — in an Israeli airstrike. The town’s mayor, Afif Najdi, called it a massacre.

Warplanes bombed a convoy escaping the town, killing several people and wounding many others.

“I’m all alone, and there’s no one to save me,” said Fatmeh Ashqar, 27. She had severe neck wounds and burns, and a passenger riding with her, Alia Aladeen, had severe head injuries that left her in a coma.

The radio warning stressed that any truck, including pickups, traveling south of the Litani River would be suspected of transporting weapons or rockets, and could therefore be a target.

While much of the bombardment was directed at poor Shiite areas, the new emphasis on trucks — the Israelis have hit several carrying medical and relief supplies and even cement in recent days — brought the war home to one of Beirut’s wealthiest Maronite Christian areas on Wednesday morning."

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/20/world/middleeast/20cnd-mideast.html?pagewanted=2&ei=5094&en=2015003e5ae1d65d&hp&ex=1153454400&partner=homepage

On edit:
Some photos of Israel "doing everything possible" to avoid civilian killing. Photos of families blown up after heeding the IDF warning to flee:

http://nyc.indymedia.org/en/2006/07/73089.html#

[Spazito]

19. It seems it may have been a mosque under construction with no

Hezbollah leaders anyway near it. I have not heard of any civilian deaths as a result....yet.

[anotherdrew]

23. contruction site or bunker? how long 'til it's bomb-shelter or bunker?

just be thankful it wasn't a school's evactuation shelter, next time it might be.

I guess there are no safe places