Israel to hold back troops in Lebanon

The military admitted accidentally hitting a United Nations outpost.
COMBINED DISPATCHES
JERUSALEM -- A day after sustaining its worst battlefield loss in its drive to rout Hezbollah militants from southern Lebanon, the Israeli government on Thursday shelved plans to send more troops into the dangerous terrain.
Instead, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his security Cabinet approved the call-up of as many as 15,000 reinforcements and signaled that they'll continue to use smaller, elite forces in the campaign to cripple the Islamist group.
Defense Minister Amir Peretz said after the meeting that the troops were being called up so the military would be prepared if it needed to do more in the confrontation.
"We have embarked on an unavoidable war," Peretz said. "This is a war we must win."
The security Cabinet's decision suggests that the government thinks it has time to use the more cautious strategy instead of sending in major ground forces.
Meanwhile, a top Israeli general said for the first time that the military had deliberately -- but accidentally -- hit a United Nations outpost Tuesday. The attack killed four unarmed peacekeepers.
Brig. Gen. Shuki Shahar, the deputy chief of the military's Northern Command, said soldiers in the field had accidentally called in the coordinates of the U.N. base and that the airstrike had been approved up the chain of command.
"Sometimes mistakes are made and innocent people are hit," Shahar said. "We do the best we can. We didn't recognize it as their base."
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan had suggested Tuesday that the military had targeted the outpost deliberately. Israeli leaders rejected that allegation, but Shahar's initial findings indicate that the military did strike the base deliberately, even if it wasn't an intentional attempt to kill peacekeepers.
A spokesman for Annan, Farhan Haq, said Israel hadn't given Annan an explanation and hadn't responded to his request for a joint investigation with the United Nations.
Israeli fire has hit U.N. observation posts in southern Lebanon at least 10 times. The day before the fatal attack, Israeli shelling wounded four Ghanaian soldiers with the U.N. force, Haq said. Earlier, another U.N. observer was missing and presumed dead after Israeli shells struck an observation post in the village of Hosh.
Other developments
In other developments:
Al-Qaida's No. 2 leader called Thursday for Muslims to unite in a holy war against Israel and to join the fighting in Lebanon and Gaza until Islam reigns from "Spain to Iraq." Ayman al-Zawahri's taped message, the first from al-Qaida since Israel began offensives against Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon and Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip, was a sweeping recruiting effort that even called on non-Muslims to join the Islamic cause.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Thursday that Israel has ordained its own destruction by its attacks in Lebanon, according to Iran's state news agency. "The occupying regime of Palestine has actually pushed the button of its own destruction by launching a new round of invasion and barbaric onslaught on Lebanon," the Islamic Republic News Agency quoted the president as saying.
A top Iranian negotiator reportedly visited Damascus on Thursday for talks on the Lebanese crisis with the Syrian and Hezbollah leaders, highlighting the three-way alliance arrayed against Israel. Thursday's meeting in Damascus was reported by Iranian news agencies as well as Kuwait's Al-Siyassah newspaper, known for its opposition to the Syrian regime. Al-Siyassah said the talks were to discuss ways to maintain supplies to Hezbollah with "Iranian arms flowing through Syrian territories."