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Lebanese defense minister: Army will fight ground invasion
Lebanon's army, which so far has sat on the sidelines of the violence raging in the country, will fight an Israeli ground invasion, Defense Minister Elias Murr said on Al-Jazeera television Thursday.
"The Lebanese army - and I stress - the Lebanese army will resist and defend and will prove that it is an army that deserves respect," he said.
In most of the previous Israeli attacks, including in 1978 and the 1982 invasion in which Beirut was occupied, the Lebanese army largely stayed out of the fighting.
Some 20 Lebanese soldiers have been killed in strikes on their bases during the Israeli bombardment of Lebanon.
Nasrallah: Hezbollah leadership intact
Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah said Thursday that the group's leadership remains intact, appearing in an interview on Al-Jazeera TV a day after Israel claimed to have bombed a bunker where he may have been hiding.
"I can confirm without exaggerating or using psychological warfare, that we have not been harmed," he said. He denied claims by Israel to have destroyed half of Hezbollah's rocket arsenal.
Nasrallah also said there was "no way in the world" Hezbollah would release two Israel Defense Forces soldiers it kidnapped last week in a cross-border raid, except as part of a prisoner exchange brokered through indirect negotiations.
Nasrallah also denied claims by Israel to have destroyed half of Hezbollah's rocket arsenal, calling the claims "baseless."
More
http://haaretz.com/hasen/spages/741100.html
In most of the previous Israeli attacks, including in 1978 and the 1982 invasion in which Beirut was occupied, the Lebanese army largely stayed out of the fighting.
Some 20 Lebanese soldiers have been killed in strikes on their bases during the Israeli bombardment of Lebanon.
Nasrallah: Hezbollah leadership intact
Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah said Thursday that the group's leadership remains intact, appearing in an interview on Al-Jazeera TV a day after Israel claimed to have bombed a bunker where he may have been hiding.
"I can confirm without exaggerating or using psychological warfare, that we have not been harmed," he said. He denied claims by Israel to have destroyed half of Hezbollah's rocket arsenal.
Nasrallah also said there was "no way in the world" Hezbollah would release two Israel Defense Forces soldiers it kidnapped last week in a cross-border raid, except as part of a prisoner exchange brokered through indirect negotiations.
Nasrallah also denied claims by Israel to have destroyed half of Hezbollah's rocket arsenal, calling the claims "baseless."
More
http://haaretz.com/hasen/spages/741100.html
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"Our constitutional duty is to defend Lebanon as a Lebanese army. This is our role.
"Any Lebanese citizens, Christians or Muslims, who want to defend their land are welcomed.
"Defending one's land can be done in several ways, either helping the army with food or water, giving psychological or political support because this is a war opened on all fronts."
But al-Murr said the Lebanese army would not be working directly with Hezbollah.
"But for the resistance (Hezbollah) to enter the army and fight alongside the army, this is not an option, because the army can't fight like the resistance, nor can the resistance fight like the army."
Lebanon's army is drawn from all the country's religious communities and has remained largely neutral in the conflict between Hezbollah and Israel.
However, at least a dozen of its soldiers have been killed after Israeli aircraft targeted its bases.
Fresh attacks
The increasing signs of a ground war comes as Israeli aircraft attacked targets throughout Lebanon for the tenth successive day, bringing the Lebanese toll for the conflict to more than 340.
More
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/22060D49-9841-40F1-BD91-33E9CD62AD70.htm
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BEIRUT - The Lebanese army, which risks being sucked into Israel's conflict in Lebanon, faces a no-win situation in either defending the country or replacing Hezbollah militants on the border with the Jewish state.
Lebanon has warned that the army will go into battle if Israel invades the country as it has threatened to do - a defiance which analysts warn bears little relationship to military reality.
At the same time, Israel's demand that the army replace Hezbollah in the south ignores the relative weakness of the official military compared with what some Lebanese, along with Iran and Syria, term Lebanon's "national resistance" - the Shiite Hezbollah movement.
According to "The Military Balance", an annual report published by the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, the Lebanese army numbers 70,000 troops, including conscripts.
The numbers are, however, misleading.
According to Mustafa Alani, senior security consultant at the Dubai-based Gulf Research Center, most members of the Lebanese military do police work rather than that of a real army.
"It is not a fighting force," Alani said. "Hezbollah is far stronger than the Lebanese Army."
The Military Balance lists the army's equipment as some 310 main battle tanks, mainly old Soviet-made T-54 and T-55 models, 1,257 armoured personnel carriers and 541 pieces of artillery.
More
http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=17049