Israel Calling Up More Reserves

Haaretz is reporting still more Israeli reserves are being called up. Intensified fighting in Lebanon and in Gaza are cited as the reasons.

The Israel Defense Forces will be calling up additional reserve battalions, sending thousands more soldiers to fight Hezbollah on the northern border and Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip, the army said Friday.

The IDF said the call-up would likely come later in the day.

The decision comes on the heels of a significant expansion of the ground operations in the north, as the IDF sent thousands of troops into southern Lebanon on Thursday. Three reserve battalions have already been called up.

The reservists sent to Gaza will free up soldiers doing their compulsory service to go to the north. The additional soldiers in the north will be deployed to villages in southern Lebanon.

Four IDF soldiers were killed in clashes with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon on Thursday.

On Friday, Israel Air Force warplanes resumed strikes on Lebanon, pounding the country's main road link to Syria with missiles and setting passenger buses on fire, Lebanese police said.

Israel warned hundreds of thousands of people to flee the south "immediately," preparing for a likely ground invasion to set up a deep buffer zone in southern Lebanon.

Up in the mountains of central Lebanon on the Beirut-Damascus highway Friday, IAF warplanes fired four missiles on a bridge linking two steep mountain peaks. Part of the bridge collapsed. It has been hit several times since the fighting began.

The passenger buses were in the Bekaa Valley, about 15 kilometers from the Syrian border, on the road linking Beirut and the Syrian capital of Damascus. The strike set three buses on fire at Taanayel, but there were no casualties, police said.

Also Friday, heavy black smoke billowed from targeted areas as IAF planes renewed attacks on the ancient city of Baalbek, a major Hezbollah
stronghold in eastern Lebanon's Bekaa Valley. The jets fired missiles on residential areas in Baalbek and a large building at the entrance of the city, witnesses said. There was no immediate word on casualties.

It sounds as if Israel has a plan. Whether it is actually what they are stating publicly or not remains to be seen.