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."

On Wednesday, the Israel Defense Forces said dozens of its aircrafts dropped 23 tons of explosives on the target in the Bourj al-Barajneh neighborhood of Beirut in the late evening.

Soon after, Hezbollah issued a statement saying that "no Hezbollah leaders or elements were killed in the strike," but a building under construction to be a mosque was hit.

"It seems that the enemy wants to cover up its military and security failures with lies and claims of imaginary achievements," said the statement the group faxed to The Associated Press.

Interviewed on CNN early Thursday, Israel's ambassador to the United Nations, Dan Gillerman, said Israel would not issue a statement about the attack until it is sure of all the facts. But he added, "I can assure you that we know exactly what we hit. ... This was no religious site. This was indeed the headquarters of the Hezbollah leadership."

There was no immediate word of casualties in the incident from Hezbollah or Lebanese officials. Hezbollah has a headquarters compound in Bourj al-Barajneh that is off limits to the Lebanese police and army, so security officials could not confirm the strike.

Hezbollah poised to fire warheads of spent nuclear rods

LONDON – The British intelligence service MI6 has established that Hezbollah is poised to launch a new "rain of terror" on Israel with rockets equipped with "dirty bomb" nose cones, reports Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin.

"The nose cones will contain spent nuclear rods from Iran's nuclear programme. The rods are wrapped with conventional explosives. The dirty bombs are primarily intended to create increased panic across an already nervous population in northern Israel," claimed a senior intelligence officer in London.

Meantime, Mossad undercover agents are desperately trying to locate where the "dirty bomb" arsenal is located. It is believed to be in the Bekaa Valley.

The Israeli intelligence service has also told MI6 that it believes Hezbollah now has "up to a thousand" other rockets poised for launch.

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Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon captured two Israeli soldiers along their southern border. Provocations had been running high for some time. The Israeli Defense Forces response was to start a murderous campaign by employing their generously supplied US aircraft to bomb civilian targets, resulting in rising death toll of the innocent.

Meanwhile, Israel’s biggest cheerleader George Bush, between letting out a few4 -word expletives at the G- 8Summit and attempting to manipulate some neck therapy on the German chancellor, stated that Israel had two of their soldiers captured and they were justified in their response.

And while the rest of the civilized world calls for restraint and introduction of a UN peacekeeping force in view of the rise of human casualties, this person in charge of a democratic nation that has lost most of its credibility in the region and around the world, vetoes such a move, and continues to shoot off his mouth by first trying to involve Syria and then Iran in this round of the conflict.

Saaduddin Hariri, son of the late Rafik Hariri and a rising star in Lebanese politics, said it best when he stated that the Israeli attack on Lebanon was a crime against all Lebanese.

With their incursions on Lebanese soil and their message of death and destruction delivered by air, particularly against civilians, the Israelis are the enemy. There are no rebellious factions within Lebanese society running their own agenda as some in the West are trying so eagerly to portray. And we couldn’t agree more.

The Lebanese today stand helpless but united against this onslaught by a rogue state called Israel. Fueled by Bush’s encouragement and armed with America’s armaments, Israel has been daily targeting the civilian infrastructure of Lebanon, resulting in tragic human losses.

They will continue as long as their cheerleader is rapidly replenishing their missiles and weapons of mass destruction

And if the Israelis are under any delusions that they can force a government favorable to Israel on Lebanon then they couldn’t have been more mistaken. This sadistic aggression, which has united the various Lebanese ethnic factions against a common enemy, has also hardened realization in many in the region that the government of Israel is one of violence against Arabs, and fueled by murderous intent. The faces and pictures of those dismembered and killed by Israeli bombs may not appear in Western media, but the people across the Middle East cannot forget the images of those young Lebanese bodies strewn and mutilated by Israeli bombs and missiles, courtesy of George Bush. Babies and children were not spared. Nor the images of old men and women whose very survival has been threatened by Israeli destruction of their food and water sources.

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