Israel strikes Ayatollah Khomeni Square

Washington Post:

Israel pounded Lebanon with airstrikes and artillery for a second straight day on Friday, blasting airport runways, a power plant and the main road to Syria as well as seemingly symbolic targets, such as a highway named for a slain guerrilla fighter and a bridge in Ayatollah Khomeni Square.

The radical Shiite Muslim group Hezbollah continued to fire rockets into northern Israel, with reports of several people injured, while the Lebanese prime minister appealed to President George Bush for support.

Israel accused Iran and Syria of masterminding the Hezbollah raid that led to the killing of three soldiers and the abduction of two others from inside Israel on Wednesday, triggering the largest conflict on the Israel-Lebanon border in years. U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan said he would send a three-person team to the Middle East to urge all parties to exercise restraint.

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For both sides, the fighting appeared to cross a psychological barrier that had earlier contained the frequent clashes between Israel and Hezbollah. The attacks on the airport, which was rebuilt at a cost of $500 million in the 1990s, were Israel's first since it invaded Lebanon in 1982. Although Hezbollah threatened early Thursday to fire rockets into Haifa if Israel kept striking Beirut, it denied responsibility for the rockets after they landed. The symbolic importance of rockets hitting Israel's third-largest city, relatively far from the border, alarmed several Israeli ministers, who warned of imminent reprisals.

The steady boom of Katyusha rockets triggered air raid sirens and calls to take cover in basements throughout Israel's northern border area. More than 90 people were treated in local hospitals Thursday, most of them for symptoms of anxiety, officials said.

"This is taking us back 20 years to the Lebanon war," said Rachel Ronen, 54, whose accounting firm was left a shambles by the morning rockets that hit 15 minutes before her secretary was due for work. Asked what Israel should do in return, Ronen, her eyes red from weeping, said, "Hit them."

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Friday's bombing struck the Jiyeh power plant, the headquarters of a pro-Syrian Palestinian guerrillas in the Bekaa Valley, the offices of the "New TV" television station, and targets in the Hezbollah-dominated southern suburbs of Beirut, officials said. Meanwhile, Israeli navy ships were moving up the Mediterranean coast to block the port town of Tripoli.

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Along Resistance and Liberation Street, in the southern suburbs, an Israeli missile carved a huge crater. Another bridge was bombed along a highway known to locals as Saed Hadi Road -- named for Hadi Nasrallah, son of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed in a clash with Israeli troops in southern Lebanon nine years ago.

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"We have decided to impose a closure on Lebanon in the air, in the sea and on the ground," Maj. Gen. Udi Adam, head of Israel's northern command, said at a news conference. He said the Israeli military was attempting to force the government "to deploy its army in south Lebanon, take responsibility for the kidnapped, return them" and fulfill a U.N. resolution calling for the disarmament of Hezbollah.

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That is a pretty simple statement of objectives, but it is unlikely the Islamist will comprehend it or heed its message. The attacks on the symbolic targets are part of a psyops campaign that is also at work. The Islamist usually react emotionally to events so these types of operations are effective against them. Hitting Ayatollah Khomeni Square ought to make the rest of the world pass out sweets and shout for joy at the destruction of a symbol of the evil Iran regime and the one who started a war against the US in 1979.