The citizens of Qana village issued a statement after the terrorist massacre that was perpetrated by the Israeli occupation forces against the civilians of the old men, women and children. It read: "Ten years have passed since the first massacre that was perpetrated by the Zionist enemy in our dear hometown Qana, the town of the symbolic Islamic-Christian coexistence in south Lebanon. We thought that the massacre which the enemy committed in a UN outpost would render it feel the shame so that it will not repeat it again. However, the years have proven that as soon as this arrogant enemy feels the frustration while confronting the heroic combatants of the resistance, it seeks the way of criminality by killing the unarmed civilians. Those Zionists have no excuse when they say that the resistance militants are seeking refuge at the civilians because this is a lie.
Our heroes are present at the battlefields in Maroun El-Rass, Bint Jbail, Tybee and in every frontline of our beloved homeland. Everyone knows that the Israeli is observing each movement in each spot of the south and is truly aware of the presence of civilians, women and children, in this place. It is like as if our beloved hometown and its beloved citizens were to be destined for a sacrifice for the sake of our dear homeland. As long as the martyrdom is our destiny, we will welcome it. But the issue which we condemn is the killing of the women and children. Let the world hear the ahs of these innocent victims. We want Mr. Bush, Miss Rice and everyone who sympathizes with the criminal Israelis to tell us: who is the terrorist? Is it our children or the state of "Israel"? And do they want to build the new Middle East on the body pieces of our children? This question may not find an answer at these people. However, we pray for the resistance militants to emerge triumphant and perverse Lebanon."


Source:National Media Agency, July 30, 2006 (14:15). Date: 30/07/2006 Time 16:43

Lebanon is investigating reports from doctors that "Israel" has used weapons in its 15-day-old bombardment of southern Lebanon that have caused wounds they have never seen before.
"We are sending off samples tomorrow, but we have no confirmation yet that illegal weapons have been used," Health Minister Mohammed Khalife said.
The "Israeli" army said it had used only conventional weapons and ammunition in attacks aimed at Hizbullah guerrillas and nothing contravening international law.
Blackened bodies have been showing up at hospitals in southern Lebanon two weeks into the war between "Israel" and Hizbullah guerrillas that has seen at least 418 people, mostly civilians, killed in Lebanon and at least 42 "Israelis".
Killed by "Israeli" air raids, the Lebanese dead are charred in a way, local doctors, who have lived through years of civil war and "Israeli" occupation, say they have not seen before.
Bachir Cham, a Belgian-Lebanese doctor at the Southern Medical Centre in Sidon, received eight bodies after an "Israeli" air raid on nearby Rmeili which he said exhibited such wounds.
He has taken 24 samples from the bodies to test what killed them. He believes it is a chemical.
Cham said the bodies of some victims were "black as shoes, so they are definitely using chemical weapons. They are all black but their hair and skin is intact so they are not really burnt. It is something else."
"If you burnt someone with petrol their hair would burn and their skin would burn down to the bone. The "Israelis" are 100 per cent using chemical weapons."
Lebanese President Emile Lahoud has repeatedly accused "Israel" of using phosphorus bombs in its offensive.
Human Rights Watch, which has accused the "Israeli" army of using cluster bombs in populated areas of southern Lebanon, said it had not verified claims that "Israel" had used phosphorus.
"We are investigating but we have not confirmed anything yet. We have seen phosphorus used before and we have seen it in the artillery stocks of the "Israeli" army in the north," said Peter Bouckaert, emergencies director at Human Rights Watch.
"Phosphorus shells do have a legitimate use in illuminating the battlefield at night. The offensive use of phosphorus would be a violation of international conventions."
Television footage shows some bodies, such as those of 20 civilians killed when an "Israeli" missile hit the van in which they were fleeing the border village of Marwaheen, blackened in the way Cham describes. No one knows what killed them.
"We are seeing abnormal burns, different from wars we have seen in the past. The corpses of these victims are shrinking to half their normal size. You think it is the corpse of a child at first but it turns out to be a grown man," said Raed Salman Zeinedine, director of Tyre Government Hospital.
"We have never seen anything like it but what the causes are I do not want to speculate. We have no scientific answer."


Source:AAP July 27, 2006.. Date: 27/07/2006 Time 16:38

The weakest link
By Yossi Sarid
The defense and army chiefs have been telling us for years that the test is in the results, with no excuses. In this particular test, the results so far are disappointing and painful.
Half the night I sat up on the balcony, hearing the cannons boom, watching the flaring sparks, and I could not fall asleep. In my daydreams, I saw masses of refugees fleeing north over there and south over here. All the big dreams I ever had are also fleeing from me now, carrying battered suitcases and wide-eyed children.
Soldiers from Bint Jbail and Maroun al-Ras stand facing the balcony and I inspect them as though they were on parade. They seem tired to death and their ranks have dwindled noticeably. It is ordinary soldiers who always have to rescue the nation from the stupidities of its leaders. It is they who pay the price for its gross failures.
This repeat war in Lebanon is not the Yom Kippur War. So why are Ehud Olmert and Amir Peretz becoming more and more reminiscent of Golda Meir and Moshe Dayan and "Israel" Galili, and why is Shimon Peres becoming more reminiscent of himself?
The Israeli government is now in a secure room: The fighting soldiers are covering its front and the home front is covering its back. The nation is strong and the soldiers are strong, so who is the weakest link?
They failed to find the tunnels under the fence in time, but the defense (war) minister yesterday discovered a time tunnel. Instead of progressing toward the light at the end of the tunnel, he is retreating to the darkness at the entrance. Amir Peretz is going back 24 years in time.
He wants to set up a security zone in south Lebanon all over again.
So how can one sleep? We believed that we had exorcised our demons, yet here they are again, bringing horror to the approaching day, which is neither day nor night but twilight. Lebanon is here and 1982 is now. It looms in all its horror, trailing a bloody train of 18 years. It has been a long time since we have seen such a frightening Salto Mortale.
Yet again, they will set up a security zone, and the soldiers will return to their outposts deep inside Lebanon, and the Beaufort will be reconquered. Maybe they will even change the names of former outposts that recall shame and horror. Maybe they won, because of nostalgia. Either way, once more the soldiers will lie in deadly ambushes in the thick undergrowth. Once again, four mothers will demonstrate and three fathers will be sacrificed on the altar.
And Amir Peretz, who in 1982 was mayor of Sderot, will also go back in the time tunnel to his old job. Only those who were killed will not return.


Source:Haaretz, 28-7-2006. Date: 28/07/2006 Time 10:21

Israeli warplanes and artillery pounded south Lebanon early on Thursday, hours after it suffered its heaviest losses in a 16 day old assault on Hezbollah guerrillas that shows no signs of abating.
Israeli jets knocked down communications masts in the Amsheet area north of Beirut after attacking three trucks carrying medical and food supplies to the east, killing two drivers, security sources said. "Israel" accuses Lebanon/s eastern neighbor Syria of supplying Hezbollah with weapons.
Other aircraft blasted targets in and around several villages and towns in the south as artillery batteries opened up at Lebanon/s side of the border.
Hizbullah guerrillas killed nine Israeli soldiers in house-to-house fighting in a frontier town and a nearby village on Wednesday, the same day diplomats in Rome failed to agree on calling for an immediate ceasefire.
An Israeli general said the onslaught, which has killed 433 Lebanese, mostly civilians, would continue "for several more weeks". The fighting began on July 12 when Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers and killed eight in a cross-border raid.
A total of 51 Israelis have been killed by Hezbollah attacks in the border area and rockets in northern occupied Palestine.
Foreign ministers at the crisis conference pledged to work urgently for a "lasting, permanent and sustainable" ceasefire, but did not call for the fighting to stop now, as Lebanon and its Arab allies had demanded.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice cautioned Syria and Iran that they faced further isolation if they tried to scupper the U.S.-led attempts to get a ceasefire.
"This needs to be between Lebanon and "Israel"," Rice told reporters en route from Rome to Malaysia to meet Asian ministers.
The United States has backed Israeli demands for Hezbollah to pull back from the border and ultimately disarm.
Ali Larijani, the secretary of Iran/s Supreme National Security Council and chief nuclear negotiator, flew to Damascus on Wednesday for crisis talks with senior Syrian officials about the situation in the Middle East, diplomats said.
Not invited
In stark contrast to Rice, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Iran and Syria should be included in efforts to halt the war. Rice blames Tehran and Damascus for stoking the conflict.
"Israel", Iran and Syria were not invited to the Rome talks.
In the Gaza Strip, scene of another Israeli offensive, Israeli forces killed 24 Palestinians, including at least 12 militants during fighting.
"Israel" has killed 141 Palestinians in a month-long campaign to recover a captured soldier and stop rocket fire from Gaza.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said Lebanon and the Palestinian territories face complete destruction in the latest Middle East violence.
"What is happening in Palestine is a complete destruction and it is happening in both Palestine and Lebanon," he told reporters on a visit to Algeria. "And at the same time, there is a refusal to reach a ceasefire that has been supported by European countries as well as Arab countries."
In the latest fighting in Lebanon, Lebanese security sources said guerrillas ambushed an Israeli force advancing on the town of Bint Jbeil, four km (2.5 miles) from the frontier.
The Israeli army said eight of its soldiers were killed at Bint Jbeil and 22 wounded. An Israeli army officer was killed and three soldiers were wounded in a Hezbollah attack on the nearby village of Maroun al-Ras.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert strove to limit diplomatic damage from the killing of four UN observers in an air strike on their post in south Lebanon on Tuesday, telling Annan he was sorry at the deaths, but expressing shock at the UN chief/s suggestion the attack was deliberate.
An Irish army officer in south Lebanon had warned "Israel" six times that air strikes threatened the lives of UN observers before Tuesday/s deaths, Ireland/s Foreign Ministry said.
Israeli bombing has forced an estimated 750,000 people to flee their homes. Many are still trapped in war zones.
A large UN aid convoy reached the southern port of Tyre to distribute deliveries to an area devastated by Israeli bombing.

Source:Reuters, July 27, 2006. Date: 27/07/2006 Time 18:37