By Nada Bakri Daily Star staff
BEIRUT: Israel's assault on Lebanon continued for the eighth day Wednesday, killing at least 55 civilians as Israeli jets and gunboats hit civilian targets across the country. In particular, the Israeli military seems to have "discovered" a new threat in trucks and vans, some of which were carrying civilians and medical supplies, but Israel maintains were bringing weapons and supplies to Hizbullah fighters.
In Tyre, a Lebanese military jeep and a civilian van were destroyed when they were attacked by Israeli warplanes.
An Israeli jet also fired four rockets on a truck used to drill for water, which reportedly was mistaken for a missile launcher. The truck was parked in a parking lot on a leafy road in a residential Christian neighborhood of central Beirut. The attack was the first direct strike in the heart of the Lebanese capital. There were no casualties, police said.
A convoy of trucks was also struck before dawn by Israeli jets, in Hadath, east of Beirut.
The attacks prompted acting Interior Minister Ahmad Fatfat to warn civilians Wednesday to stay clear of trucks, after Israeli air strikes appeared to be targeting any vehicle that could be used to transport weapons.
Israeli fighter-bombers also destroyed nearly 20 houses and buildings in Lebanon overnight.
In the southern village of Srifa near Tyre, Israeli air strikes flattened 15 houses that housed 25-30 people. By the time The Daily Star went to press it was not yet known if they were at home when the attack occurred.
In other strikes, Israeli planes again targeted Hizbullah's "security perimeter" in Beirut's southern suburbs. The zone, where the group once maintained its headquarters, has been flattened in the past week.
Israeli jets also targeted two military bases of a pro-Syrian Palestinian group in eastern Lebanon. There were no reports of casualties from the three attacks on the bases of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC) in Sultan Yaacoub, where the group maintains underground bunkers.
One person was killed and two were wounded when a missile struck a nearby building that housed a Hizbullah-affiliated social institution in the Southern village of Ghaziyeh.
In the Bekaa, four people were killed and three wounded in an air raid on a woodworking shop in the village of Loussi.
Three Indian workers were killed in an air strike on a glass factory in the eastern Bekaa Valley, medical sources said.
Israeli air strikes also targeted a farm in the Bekaa valley, destroying it completely.
They also struck at roads, including the Baalbek-Homs highway, further isolating Lebanon, which is now almost completely cut off from the rest of the world after the main Beirut-Damascus highway was severed in an air strike last week. - With agencies
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