July 19, 2006	Wednesday	Jumadi-ul-Sani 22, 1427

BEIRUT, July 18: Israeli warplanes battered Lebanon on Tuesday, killing 31 people, and more Hezbollah rockets hit northern Israel, killing one, with no sign that diplomacy would halt the week-old conflict any time soon.

Civilians on both sides were angry about the bombardment, but Israel and Hezbollah showed no willingness to halt the fighting, which has killed 235 people in Lebanon and 25 Israelis, or heed proposals for a new UN-backed stabilisation force.

“I don’t even know where our neighbourhood was,” said a Lebanese, looking for where his home had been on the edge of a bomb-blasted Hezbollah compound in southern Beirut.

“They’re still bombarding the area to grind it to dust. What kind of crime is this?” said the man, giving his name as Hassan.

Israelis, stunned by Hezbollah rocket attacks, said they wanted their army to smash the guerrilla group and most favoured killing its leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, a poll showed.

“We are killing those we need to kill,” said Hanna Dehan, 60, speaking near the city of Haifa, where eight people were killed on Sunday when a rocket hit a train station.

A rocket attack on the northern Israeli town of Nahariya killed one person on Tuesday. Other Hezbollah rockets hit Haifa.

In Lebanon, nine family members, including children, were killed in an air strike on their house in Aitaroun village. Ten people were killed in strikes in the south and the Bekaa Valley.

Warplanes bombed a Lebanese army barracks east of Beirut, killing 11 soldiers, including four officers, and wounding 30.

A truck carrying medical supplies donated by the United Arab Emirates was hit and its driver killed en route from Damascus.

The Israeli army said Hezbollah was smuggling weapons from Syria, but added it did not regard Syria as a target. The United States called for Hezbollah backers Iran and Syria to exert their influence to halt the guerrilla group’s rocket fire.

Hezbollah said another of its fighters had been killed.

—Reuters