Mideast fighting rises to new pitch

Heavy shelling in the Khiam area Tuesday forced the UN observers to go "ground hog," UNIFIL's term for heading to the bomb shelters. At around 1:20 p.m., an Israeli jet dropped a bomb just 300 yards from the UN post. The Israeli Air Force has dropped hundreds of these massive aerial bombs since the war began, each one turning three- or four-story houses into rubble and killing anyone inside.

The OGL observers immediately contacted their operations room at UNIFIL's headquarters in Naqoura to alert them of the close impact. The group then warned the Israeli military that their aircraft were dropping bombs dangerously close to a UN position. The Israelis responded to OGL that they would check the situation and make any necessary adjustments. Yet over the next six hours, Israeli jets dropped another 10 aerial bombs between 100 yards and 300 yards from the UN position, according to a UNIFIL officer.

"The bombs were falling on the heads of our guys for six hours," the officer says. "We kept telling the Israelis that our men had been lucky so far but next time there was going to be a tragedy and could they please correct their targeting. We were begging them to stop."

The fatal airstrike hit the UN post at around 7:20 p.m., with one bomb striking the three-story building.

"One direct hit completely destroyed the three-story building and at least one more bomb hit the position," says Milos Strugar, UNIFIL's senior adviser. By midday Wednesday, UNIFIL rescue teams were still attempting to recover the bodies.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said he was "shocked and deeply distressed by the apparently deliberate targeting by the Israel Defense Forces of a UN observer post in southern Lebanon."

UNIFIL has a history of being fired on by the Israeli military dating back to its inception in 1978.

Several UNIFIL soldiers were killed and wounded in the 1980s and 1990s by Israeli tank fire, artillery shelling, and airstrikes against their positions and convoys. In the 1980s, UNIFIL troops also found themselves under fire from Palestinians and Lebanese militants who regarded the peacekeeping force as an obstacle to their resistance against Israel.

In April 1996, Israeli artillery shelled the UNIFIL Fijian battalion's headquarters, killing more than 100 Lebanese who were seeking shelter there during an earlier Israeli offensive against Hizbullah. In January 2004, a French OGL officer was killed by an Israeli tank shell.

Israel has long viewed the UN as biased in favor of Arab interests. But Moshe Maoz, an Israeli political scientist who specializes in Lebanon and Syria, says Israel has recently come to view the UN as more evenhanded – such as in UN resolution 1559, calling for Hizbullah to be disarmed – and wouldn't purposely attack it.

"I cannot imagine that Israel, with all the problems it has in the international community already, would target UNIFIL, even if in the past they have cooperated with Hizbullah," says Mr. Maoz, a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. "Israel doesn't have an interest in targeting UNIFIL, especially as Israel is dependent on the UN for future arrangements to end this crisis."

• Staff writer Ilene R. Prusher contributed reporting from Jerusalem.

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