ISRAEL ATTACKS BEIRUT AIRPORT

JERUSALEM (July 13) - Israeli planes attacked the runways of Beirut International Airport early Thursday, Israeli Army Radio reported, starting off a second day of attacks after Hezbollah guerrillas carried out a cross-border raid, capturing two soldiers.
In fighting on Wednesday eight Israeli soldiers and three Lebanese were killed.
Meeting in emergency session late Wednesday, Israel's Cabinet resolved to "respond with the necessary severity to this act of aggression, and it will indeed do so," according to a statement. Israel Radio reported that the Cabinet authorized the military to move Hezbollah away from the border, possibly setting the stage for a prolonged operation, Israel's first in Lebanon since it withdrew in 2000 following an 18-year occupation of the south.
The Army Radio report said the object of the attack on Beirut airport was to shut down air traffic in and out of the Lebanese capital.
Overnight, Hezbollah fired rockets and shells at Israeli military bases along the border, the military said. Also, an Israeli civilian was wounded by a rocket explosion in the border village of Zarit. His condition was not known.
Hezbollah's brazen raid early Wednesday, attacking two Israeli army vehicles, killing three soldiers and snatching two, opened a second front for the Israeli army, which is now fighting Islamic militants in both Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, where it is looking for another soldier who was captured more than two weeks ago by Hamas-linked militants.
Hitting hard on the Gaza front, an Israeli plane bombed the Palestinian Foreign Ministry building in Gaza City early Thursday, collapsing part of the structure and causing widespread damage in the area.
The Israeli military confirmed it carried out an airstrike on the Palestinian Foreign Ministry, noting that it is "led by Hamas." The Palestinian foreign minister is Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert called the Hezbollah raid an "act of war" by Lebanon.
Following the full Cabinet meeting, Olmert met with senior ministers and brought up the threat of Hezbollah's long-range missiles that threaten all of northern Israel. "We didn't chose to deal with it now, but new reality forces us deal with it," he said, according to participants.
Residents of northern Israeli towns spent the night in underground bomb shelters as Hezbollah, an anti-Israel guerrilla group that essentially runs southern Lebanon, launched rockets across the border.
Jubilant Hezbollah supporters and Palestinians in Lebanon fired guns in the air and set off firecrackers at the news of the soldiers' capture.
Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah said he would free the soldiers only in a prisoner swap, adding that he was open to a package deal that would include the release of the soldier held captive in Gaza.
"The capture of the two soldiers could provide a solution to the Gaza crisis," he told reporters in Beirut.
Analysts in Lebanon said Hezbollah also might have launched the raid and confronted Israel to improve its standing in the Arab world and at home, where the militants have come under pressure to disarm.
Palestinians in Gaza welcomed the attack in Lebanon, hoping it would force Israel to shift its focus away from them.
"People are cheering this attack in Gaza because they view it as a kind of revenge and reprisal against what Israel has been doing in Gaza," said Salah Bardawil, a spokesman for Hamas in the Palestinian parliament. "Militarily, by opening a new front against Israel , it would ease the pressure on us."
An Israeli military official disputed that theory, saying the army had no intention of moving any of its forces from the Gaza theater. The troops already on the northern border would deal with the conflict with Lebanon, backed by other reinforcements if needed, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss troop movements.
Israel and Lebanon have a long history of conflict, punctuated by a full-scale Israeli invasion in 1982, and its 18-year occupation of a buffer zone in southern Lebanon that was intended to prevent attacks on northern Israel. The United Nations certified that Israel's 2000 withdrawal from Lebanon was complete, but Lebanon laid claim to a small sliver of border territory that the U.N. said was actually part of Syria.
Hezbollah, backed by Iran and Syria and branded a terror group by the United States and Israel, used the dispute to justify continued cross-border attacks, but the fighting Wednesday was by far the worst since Israel withdrew six years ago, and it threatened to further escalate.
"This is a terrorist attack and it is clearly timed to exacerbate already high tensions in the region and sow further violence," U.S. National Security Council spokesman Frederick Jones. "We also hold Syria and Iran - which directly support Hezbollah _ responsible for this attack and for the ensuing violence."
Syrian Vice President Farouk al-Sharaa denied his country had a role in either of the abductions and blamed Israel for the attacks. "For sure, the occupation (of the Palestinian territories) is the cause provoking both Lebanese and Palestinian people, and that's why there is Lebanese and Palestinian resistance," he said.
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the attack undermined regional stability, adding that she spoke to Israeli and Lebanese officials as well as U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan to discuss the incident.
Annan called for restraint. "We would not want to see an expansion, an escalation, of conflict in the region," he said.
The eight soldiers killed made up the single highest number of Israeli military casualties since the army's offensive in the West Bank town of Jenin on April 9, 2002, which left 14 soldiers dead.
Israel also sent warplanes deep into southern Lebanon - targeting bridges, roads and Hezbollah positions. The military said it attacked 40 targets to stop Hezbollah from moving the soldiers. Dozens of ground troops also entered southwestern Lebanon, near where the soldiers were snatched, witnesses said.
Israeli troops shot a Hezbollah guerrilla later Wednesday as he tried to cross the border, the Israeli army said.