Saturday, July 15, 2006

Israeli air strike on Nasrallah's home

From ABC News Online, 15/7/06 - AFP/Reuters...

Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah has declared "open war" against the Jewish state after emerging unscathed from an Israeli air strike on his home and office in the Lebanese capital. "You wanted an open war, you will get an open war," the Shiite militant leader said in a defiant audio message after the evening raid.

....Nasrallah said there would be "war at all levels ... to Haifa, and beyond Haifa...."

...An Israeli military spokeswoman declined to describe the evening air strike as an assassination attempt against the 45-year-old Hezbollah chief. She would confirm only that a "Hezbollah terror organisation headquarters was targeted". But Israeli television said that it was a calculated attempt against Nasrallah's life carried out in response to specific intelligence on his whereabouts. Hezbollah television said the strikes "destroyed the building that hosts Hezbollah's secretariat-general" and that Nasrallah's house was hit.

Israeli government ministers had made no secret of their desire to see the Hezbollah leader eliminated. Israeli Interior Minister Roni Bar-On told public radio ahead of the strikes that Nasrallah decided his own fate. "We will settle our accounts with him when the time comes," he said.

The Hezbollah leader's predecessor Abbas al-Musawi was killed in a 1992 Israeli air strike, along with his wife and three-year-old daughter....

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