The 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.
Olmert 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."
Hezbollah fought the commandos with automatic rifles and rocket-propelled
grenades, while Israeli jets fired missiles at the surrounding guerrilla force,
Rahal said.
One 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.
"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.
A 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.
Fighting ended at about 4 a.m., residents said.
Hezbollah 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 at the entrance to his home in Kibbutz Sa'ar near the town of
Naharia, Israeli police said.
The man, who was not immediately identified, had been riding his bike home
after a warning siren went off, said Yehuda Shavit, a local government official.
Neighbors said he was originally from the Boston area and had been living in
Israel for the last 20 years. The man's wife and two daughters had fled to
southern Israel when the rocket attacks started, Shavit said, adding that more
than half of the kibbutz residents also had left.
At the scene, police removed the remains of the rocket from the crater it
blasted, as an orange bulldozer was clearing away the rubble.
An Associated Press reporter standing on a hilltop overlooking the Lebanese
border town of Kfar Kila, about a mile from Israel, saw dozens of outgoing
rockets fly overhead and across the Israeli border. Israeli artillery was
returning fire, with a shell falling about every two minutes.
Israel 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, striking between the villages of Fakua and Jalboun, near Beit Shean.
