Israeli air raids kill 40 civilians in Lebanon

Reuters | August 4 2006

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Israeli air strikes killed at least 40 civilians in Lebanon on Friday and Hizbollah launched its longest-range rocket attack of the war as world powers tried to overcome their differences on how to end the fighting.

One Israeli air strike hit a farm near Qaa, close to the Syrian border in the Bekaa Valley where workers, mostly Syrian Kurds, were loading plums and peaches on to trucks, local officials said. They said 33 people were killed and 20 wounded.

Television footage showed bodies of what appeared to be farm workers lined up near the ruins of a small structure in fruit groves. Strewn nearby were fruit baskets.

"I was picking peaches when three bombs hit. Others were having lunch and they were torn to pieces," said Mohammad Rashed, one of the wounded. Syria's official news agency said 17 of the dead were Syrian workers, five of them women.

"The air force spotted a lorry that was suspected to have been loaded with weapons cross from Syria into Lebanon on a route that is routinely used to transport weapons," an Israeli military source said. "The lorry entered into a building and remained inside for an hour, then left and returned to Syria."

He said that when the lorry left, the building was attacked.

It was one of the deadliest air strikes in 24 days of war. An air raid on a house in the town of Qana on Sunday killed up to 54 civilians, Lebanese officials say. Human Rights Watch says it has confirmed 28 dead in that attack with 13 people missing.

Several Hizbollah rockets landed in or near the Israeli city of Hadera, about 80 km (50 miles) from the Lebanese border -- the deepest rocket attack of the war so far. Hizbollah said in a statement issued later it had fired Khaibar 1 rockets at Hadera, partly in response to the Israeli attack on Qaa.

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