Violence escalates in Lebanon

BEIRUT, Lebanon -- Hezbollah and Israel traded rocket and missile barrages without letup for a fifth day Sunday, as the war that has suddenly flared in the Middle East showed no sign of easing. Hezbollah rockets struck deep inside Israel, killing eight people in the northern city of Haifa, and Israel answered with even more lethal blows across Lebanon and into the Bekaa Valley near Syria.

The toll on both sides rose to at least 178, including three Lebanese soldiers and many civilians, as strikes continued into Sunday. In addition to the Israeli victims at a rail repair facility in Haifa, eight Canadians vacationing at their family village in Lebanon died in an Israeli raid, and a sea-launched missile killed at least nine people at a civil defense building in the southern Lebanese port of Tyre.

Israel warned of massive retaliation after the Haifa attack and accused Iran and Syria of providing the weaponry used. Military officials said the missiles were more advanced -- with longer range and heavier warheads -- than the hundreds of rockets the guerrillas had rained on northern Israel earlier.

With the violence rising, foreigners began to flee by the hundreds and several nations drew up plans to get their citizens out. U.S. planners arrived to organize evacuation for any of the 25,000 Americans trying to leave. Italian military flights rushed out some 350 people, mostly Europeans, and two Marine helicopters ferried 21 U.S. citizens, most with medical conditions, to Cyprus.

In the early hours of Sunday, witnesses reported that waves of Israeli airstrikes had hit the Lebanese city of Tripoli and Hezbollah strongholds in eastern town of Baalbek. Barrages from gunboats killed four in a village south of Beirut. Three Lebanese army soldiers were killed and seven were missing after an Israeli airstrike in the fishing village of Abdeh in northernmost Lebanon.

With violence spiraling, world leaders meeting in St. Petersburg produced for the first time a draft framework to end the crisis and a U.N. envoy landed in Beirut. The Group of Eight most industrialized nations expressed concern over "rising civilian casualties on all sides" and urged both sides to stop their attacks.

"These extremist elements and those that support them cannot be allowed to plunge the Middle East into chaos and provoke a wider conflict," the G-8 leaders said in a statement. "The extremists must immediately halt their0attacks."

The United Nations, the European Union and Italy also pushed ahead with separate efforts Sunday to try to end the fighting.

But both Israel and Hezbollah signaled that their attacks would only intensify in an already brutal battle that has killed at least 152 in Lebanon and 23 in Israel.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert vowed "far-reaching consequences" for the Haifa attack, Hezbollah's deadliest strike ever on Israel. The morning barrage of 20 rockets came after Israeli warplanes unleashed their heaviest strikes yet on Beirut, flattening apartment buildings and blowing up a power station to cut electricity to swaths of the capital.

The Israeli military warned residents of south Lebanon to flee, promising heavy retaliation after the Haifa assault. "Nothing will deter us," Olmert said.

Along with the Lebanon attacks, Israel attacked along the second front where Israel is fighting, in Gaza. Fighter jets bombed the Palestinian Foreign Ministry in Gaza City, and clouds of smoke rose from the building, which has been hit before.

Hezbollah's leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, said that despite the barrage, the guerrillas were "in their full strength and power" and that their "missile stockpiles are still full."

"When the Zionists behave like there are no rules and no red lines and no limits to the confrontation, it is our right to behave in the same way," a tired-looking but defiant Nasrallah said in a televised address. He said Hezbollah hit Haifa because of Israel's strikes on Lebanese civilians.

Nasrallah tried to rally the Arab world around Hezbollah, saying the battle was an opportunity to deal Israel a "historic defeat." Iran and Syria are prime supporters of Hezbollah and Hamas, raising fears the sides could be drawn into a regional war.

Still, they denied Israel's claim that they had provided advanced missile technology to Hezbollah.

Smoke rose over Haifa and air raid sirens wailed as the dead and wounded were evacuated from a train station warehouse full of workers that took a direct hit in the strike, just one hour into the new work week. Orthodox rescue crews worked their way through the debris gathering pieces of flesh amid pools of blood.

In an initial response soon after, warplanes hit south Beirut around Hezbollah's headquarters, already reduced to rubble. In the southern port of Tyre, an Israeli missile tore of the top of a 12-story building, killing at least nine. Rescue workers pulled bodies from the crushed concrete.

Eight Canadians of Lebanese origin, all members of the same family, were killed by an Israeli strike on their village in the south where they'd come for a summer visit. Canada said it was sending commercial ships to evacuate its citizens.

After nightfall, Israeli missiles destroyed fuel depots at Beirut's airport. Hezbollah retaliated with rockets that exploded in the Israeli town of Afula and Upper Nazareth, showing a longer range than previous barrages. There were no immediate reports of casualties.

Another series of airstrikes followed that, hitting on the Mediterranean coast near Beirut and in the northern port of Tripoli, as well as in the eastern town of Baalbek, police and witnesses said. At least four people were killed.

Western nations clearly expected a drawn-out fight even as diplomatic efforts began in earnest.

In Beirut, Vijay Nambiar, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan's special political adviser, met the Lebanese prime minister. "Enough innocent lives have been lost and property infrastructure has been damaged," Nambiar said.

Syria warned on Sunday that any aggression against it "will be met with a firm and direct response whose timing and methods are unlimited." Hundreds of cars drove through Damascus on Sunday night with drivers and passengers waving Syrian and Hezbollah flags and honking horns.

Iran threatened "unimaginable damage" to Israel if Syria were attacked, and its supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Hezbollah was winning its fight against Israel and would not disarm. Iran's foreign minister headed to Damascus late Sunday for talks.

The damage in southern Beirut -- a teeming Shiite district where Hezbollah's main headquarters are located -- was colossal after Israel unleashed its worst bombardment yet, before the Haifa strike. A series of 18 explosions rocked the city before sunrise.

The Jiyeh power plant, on Beirut's southern outskirts, was in flames after it was hit, cutting electricity to many areas in the capital and south Lebanon. Firefighters pleaded for help from residents after saying they didn't have enough water to put out the blaze.

Large swaths of Beirut were covered with dust, and the city of 1.5 million people was emptying as residents fled to the relative safety of the mountains and the eastern Bekaa Valley.

Some residents of Beirut's southern Shiite neighborhood, Dahiyah, ventured out of shelters to collect belongings from their shattered city blocks, where buildings were collapsed on their sides, missing top floors or reduced to pancaked concrete. Many emerged from their destroyed apartments with bulging shopping bags or suitcases as young Hezbollah gunmen urged them to leave quickly.

"We want to sleep on our own pillows in the shelter," Mariam Shihabiyah, a 39-year-old mother of five said as she emerged from her home with an armful of pillows and clothes. "Can you believe what happened to Dahiyah?"

Furniture pieces, blankets, mattresses, clothes and soft toys were scattered on the streets. A copy of the Quran, Islam's holy book, lay in the street with its dusty pages fluttering until a Hezbollah gunman reverently lifted it and kissed it.

In Israel, Haifa -- a bustling port city of 270,000 people -- was brought to a standstill. The streets were eerily quiet as residents huddled in bomb shelters or stocked up on milk, bread and other staples.

"It's a war, it's an emergency situation and it will get worse," said Sharon Goldstein, a 34-year-old security guard.

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Hendawi reported from Beirut and Keath from Damascus, Syria.