BAALBEK, Lebanon (AP) -- Israeli warplanes struck eastern Lebanon Tuesday, killing a woman and her six children in an attack aimed at suspected guerrilla bases.
The woman's husband and a seventh child -- an 11-year-old boy -- were injured. It was the highest civilian casualty toll this year in the war between Israel and Lebanese guerrillas.Israeli Defense Minister Yitzhak Mordechai said in a statement released in Tel Aviv that he had communicated his sorrow to Lebanon and Syria through a third party and promised both countries an investigation.
Residents of northern Israel were told to spend the night in bomb shelters in anticipation of retaliatory rocket attacks by the guerrilla group Hezbollah. Israeli warplanes flew over southern Lebanon Tuesday night and dropped flares, apparently to thwart guerrilla movements.
The Israeli attack also reportedly killed one guerrilla and destroyed a guerrilla-run radio transmitter. The radio run by Hezbollah kept operating, apparently using a backup transmitter.
Lebanese security officials said one Israeli rocket hit a farm where the couple and their seven children were working in the village of Nabi Sheet, 14 miles southwest of Baalbek.
The mother and six of her children, age 2 to 13, were killed, the security officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity.
"I felt I was lifted from the ground and then everything went black," the father, Mohammed Othman, who suffered shrapnel wounds, said from his hospital bed in Baalbek. His surviving son also was hospitalized, suffering from shock.
In Jerusalem, an Israeli army spokesman, who cannot be identified under briefing rules, said the Israeli planes had targeted a Hezbollah training facility and the radio transmitter.
Although the targets were not near civilian areas, one missile hit a building that was not the target, the spokesman said, describing it as a "malfunction."
The Lebanese security officials said one Hezbollah guerrilla was killed and another wounded in the Israeli attack. Hezbollah said in Beirut it could not confirm any guerrilla death.
Lebanon's government complained to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and called for a meeting of a multinational committee monitoring an understanding between Israel and the guerrillas on not attacking civilians.
In a statement, the Iranian-backed Hezbollah called the Israeli raid an "atrocious crime" and threatened retaliation.
Lebanese officials said five other air-to-surface missiles also hit the hills around the villages of Nabi Sheet and Janta, just west of the Syrian border.
Earlier in the day, Israeli fighter bombers also fired four rockets at suspected guerrilla bases facing an Israeli-occupied zone in southern Lebanon. There were no casualties in the raid.
Hezbollah has led the fight to oust Israeli soldiers and their allied South Lebanon Army militia from the so-called "security zone," set up by Israel in 1985 to protect its northern towns from cross-border raids.
Tuesday's bombing raids came after Hezbollah fighters exchanged fire with Israeli troops and the South Lebanon Army, the Lebanese security officials said.