Israel, Lebanon fight for 6th straight day

Both sides say their attacks will only intensify.
BEIRUT, Lebanon (AP) -- Hezbollah and Israel traded rocket and missile barrages for a sixth day today, as warfare that has erupted 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 retaliated with waves of missiles from Lebanon's north to south and into the Bekaa Valley near Syria.
The toll on both sides rose to above 200, most of them civilians, as strikes continued into today. In addition to the Israeli victims at a rail repair facility in Haifa, an Israeli rocket blew up a Lebanese army position, killing eight soldiers, and a sea-launched missile killed at least nine people in the southern Lebanese port of Tyre.
Israel had warned of massive retaliation after the Haifa attack, and accused Iran and Syria of providing the weaponry used in it. Israeli military officials said four of the missiles were the Iranian-made Fajr-3, with a 22-mile range and 200-pound payload, and far more advanced than the Katyusha 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 seeking to leave. Italian military flights rushed out some 350 people, mostly Europeans. France, which has more than 20,000 citizens in Lebanon, chartered a Greek ferry expected to pick up some 1,200 people today.
In the early hours today, witnesses reported that waves of Israeli airstrikes 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.
Eight Lebanese army soldiers were killed and 12 wounded in an Israeli airstrike in the fishing village of Abdeh in northernmost Lebanon.
Israel, technically at war with Lebanon since 1948, said it had targeted radar stations in the north because Hezbollah had used them to hit an Israeli ship Friday. It all but accused the Lebanese military of lending its support to Hezbollah.
World leaders' response
World leaders meeting in St. Petersburg produced 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.
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.
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.
Even before the latest Israeli retaliation, Israeli airstrikes had devastated southern Beirut, a teeming Shiite district that is home to Hezbollah's main headquarters.
Beirut
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.
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.
Large swaths of Beirut were covered with dust, and the city of 1.5 million people was emptying as residents fled. 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.
"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?"
The Israeli military warned residents of south Lebanon to flee, promising heavy retaliation after the Haifa assault. "Nothing will deter us," Olmert said.
Israeli attacks
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. At least nine people in nearby houses were injured, rescue workers said.
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."
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.
Elsewhere in the port city of 270,000, residents huddled in bomb shelters or stocked up on milk, bread and other staples.
In an initial response soon after, Israeli warplanes hit south Beirut around Hezbollah's headquarters, already reduced to rubble. In the southern port of Tyre, an Israeli missile tore off the top of a 12-story building, killing at least nine.
Visitors killed
Seven Canadians of Lebanese origin, including several members of the same Montreal family, were killed by an Israeli strike on their village in the south where they'd come for a summer visit, Canada's Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Ambra Dickie said. Earlier reports had said eight were killed.
After nightfall, Israeli missiles destroyed fuel depots at Beirut's airport. Hezbollah retaliated with rockets that exploded in the Israeli towns of Afula and Upper Nazareth. There were no immediate reports of casualties.
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