Fwd: targetting milk and medicine
Latest targets of air blitz: milk and medicine
By Lysandra Ohrstrom Daily Star staff Wednesday, July 19, 2006
BEIRUT: Israel switched gears in its military campaign against
Lebanon Monday and Tuesday, launching a series of debilitating air
strikes against privately owned factories throughout the country and
dealing a devastating blow to an economy already paralyzed by a week
of hits on residential areas and crucial infrastructure.
The production facilities of at least five companies in key
industrial sectors - including the country’s largest dairy farm,
Liban Lait; a paper mill; a packaging firm and a pharmaceutical plant
- have been disabled or completely destroyed. Industry insiders say
the losses will cripple the economy for decades to come.
“I think the picture will be much worse than we can possible imagine
when the whole thing ends, but the direct damage from yesterday’s
attacks to the industrial sector alone will take years to recover
from,” said Wajid al-Bisri, the vice-president of the Lebanese
Association of Industrialists (LAI).
“So many of these factories were barely functioning before,” he
added, “because of local obstacles to production like high energy
costs and labor.”
Due to broken lines of communication to the affected areas, the full
extent of the material and human damage was still unknown when The
Daily Star went to press. However, up to 15 factories have been hit,
according to some estimates.
Bisri confirmed that a plastics factory in Tyre, a tissue paper
factory in Sidon, a paper mill and a medical supply company in
Beirut’s southern suburbs and Liban Lait in the Bekaa were all almost
completely destroyed. Bisri declined to give the companies’ names.
Former LAI president Jacques Sarraf said he was aware of two
plastics factories in the South and one in the Bekaa that had
suffered extensive damage.
“There is nothing strategic about these targets, we need the
industrial sector to rebuild this country,” he said.
“But Israel is the enemy and they are doing everything they can to
destroy the country, economically, socially, politically.”
At a Monday meeting the Council of Industrialists issued a statement
asking that the international community intervene and negotiate a
cease-fire and an immediate end to Israel’s blockade of Lebanon,
which has made casualties out of all companies, directly targeted or
not.
Sami Salmad, the owner of Transmed, a Lebanese company that
distributes imported consumer goods, lost $10 million worth of
merchandise when his warehouse went up in flames following Israel’s
fourth consecutive strike against a fuel depot at Rafik Hariri
International Airport Saturday.
“Tell me when this craziness will stop and I’ll tell you how long it
will take for me to recover,” said Salmad
Ralph Sayed, owner of American Garment Industry International, a
local textile exporting company, said that as long as he has access
to fuel he would be able to stay running for about three or four
weeks using stockpiled raw materials.
He said the blockade will bury him in the long run, however. He is
understaffed because most of his Syrian workforce left at the onset
of the bombing, and transport costs have skyrocketed since he now has
to move goods to Syria by truck instead of plane - an increasingly
time-consuming, arduous, and expensive journey.
“All this we can handle, but the worst scenario is customers will no
longer make orders because they’ll think we won’t be able to fill
them,” said Sayed.