Israeli commandos, Hezbollah clash in northeastern Lebanon

BOURJ AL-MULOUK, Lebanon -- Israel pressed the first full day of a massive new ground attack, sending 8,000 troops into southern Lebanon on Wednesday and seizing five people it said were Hezbollah fighters in a dramatic airborne raid on a northeastern town. Hezbollah retaliated with its deepest strikes yet into Israel, firing a record number of more than 160 rockets.\nDiplomatic efforts faltered, with France saying it will not participate in a Thursday U.N. meeting that could send troops to help monitor a cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah. France, which may join or even lead such a force, said it does not want to talk about sending peacekeepers until fighting halts and the U.N. Security Council agrees to a wider framework for lasting peace.\nPope Benedict XVI issued a new appeal for peace in the Middle East. He urged "the international community and those who are more directly involved in this tragedy to lay down conditions as soon as possible for a definitive political solution to the crisis."\nIsraeli military officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media, said their troops were going from village to village in south Lebanon to clear them of Hezbollah guerrillas.\nHezbollah was putting up resistance, but the officials said they were confident that would not change their objective of reaching four miles into Lebanon by Thursday. They said they could easily dash inland to the Litani River -- their final objective about 18 miles from the border -- but that they were moving methodically so as not to leave behind pockets of resistance.\nIsraeli commandos flew in by helicopter before dawn into the northern town of Baalbek, on the border with Syria, capturing five Hezbollah guerrillas and killing at least 10, said Israel's army chief, Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz.\nWitnesses said Israeli forces partially destroyed the Dar al-Hikma hospital in Baalbek, where chief Hezbollah spokesman Hussein Rahal said fierce fighting raged for more than one hour.\nIsrael has not yet released the identity of those captured. When asked by The Associated Press whether any were "big fish," Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said: "They are tasty fishes."\nA Hezbollah official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to give official statements to the media, said that Israeli troops captured "four or five" people, but not at the hospital.\nHe denied they were Hezbollah fighters, saying one was a 60-year-old grocery store owner and two relatives who work in construction.\nThe hospital, which residents said is financed by an Iranian charity that is close to Hezbollah, was empty of patients at the time of the raid, the guerrilla group said.\nOlmert said that, although the scene of the fighting is called a hospital, "there are no patients there and there is no hospital, this is a base of the Hezbollah in disguise."\nHezbollah fought the commandos with automatic rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, while Israeli jets fired missiles at the surrounding guerrilla force, Rahal said.\nOne of a series of air raids struck the village of Al Jamaliyeh near the hospital. A missile hit the house of the village's mayor, Hussein Jamaleddin, instantly killing his son, brother, and five other relatives.\n"Where is the press? Where is the media to see this massacre? Count our dead. Count our body parts," Jamaleddin told The Associated Press on the telephone, minutes after the missile strike.\nA family of seven -- a mother, father and their five children -- were killed in another air raid on an area near Al Jamaliyeh, witnesses said. A van driver was killed when another missile struck nearby.\nFighting ended at about 4 a.m., residents said.\nHezbollah guerrillas hit back, firing at least 160 rockets at towns across northern Israel, wounding at least 17 people and killing a 52-year-old Israeli-American. home in Kibbutz Sa'ar near the town of Naharia, Israeli police said.\nIsraeli artillery was returning fire, with a shell falling about every two minutes.\nIsrael medics said one of the rockets hit near the town of Beit Shean, about 42 miles inside Israel, the deepest rocket strike into Israel so far. Witnesses reported that a stray Hezbollah rocket hit the West Bank for the first time. \nIsraeli jets fired at least one missile at a Lebanese army base in the village of Sarba, in the Iqlim al Tuffah province, a highland region where Hezbollah is believed to have offices and bases. \nThe Lebanese military has largely stayed out of the three-week-old conflict, though has said it will fight if Israel launches a wide-scale invasion, and Israeli warplanes have repeatedly attacked soldiers. It was not clear what prompted the airstrike on the army base.