Lebanon's Hezbollah says it has 12,000 rockets

BINT JBEIL, Lebanon - The head of Lebanon's Shiite Muslim movement Hezbollah said Wednesday it possessed more than 12,000 rockets that it could use to hit northern Israel.
"Some people think we have 12,000 rockets, Katyushas or other ones. I tell you, we have more than 12,000," Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah told a crowd of tens of thousands of supporters in Bint-Jbeil, a Shiite town near the Israeli border.
"The whole of the north of occupied Palestine as well as its settlements, airports, fields and farms are within the firing range of the fighters of the Islamic resistance," he said, referring to northern Israel.
Nasrallah's speech was to mark the fifth anniversary of the withdrawal of Israeli troops from southern Lebanon after more than 20 years of occupation, a pullout for which Hezbollah's armed wing was widely credited in the country.

05/25/2005 16:12 GMT