Hezbollah guerrillas killed eight people in Israel in a rocket barrage on Thursday despite an intensive Israeli ground and air campaign to wipe them out, as world powers struggled to end the 23-day-old war.
Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora said the war had killed 900 people in Lebanon and wounded 3 000, with a third of the casualties children under 12. He said a million Lebanese, a quarter of the population, had been displaced and infrastructure devastated. The Reuters tally of Lebanon deaths is at least 683.
More than 100 rockets struck Israel in the late afternoon, killing eight people and wounding dozens, police said. It was the highest number of Israeli dead in a rocket attack since eight people were killed in the port city of Haifa on July 16.
The latest barrages were another sign the guerrilla group was still a potent threat to Israel despite comments on Wednesday by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that Israel had destroyed its infrastructure. On Wednesday, a record barrage of 231 missiles killed one person and wounded scores.
Sixty-six Israelis have been killed in the conflict, including 39 soldiers, two of whom died in fighting on Thursday. A Lebanese security source said 80 Hezbollah fighters had been killed so far — well below the Israeli estimate of 300 to 400.
The United States, France and Britain hope for a UN Security Council resolution within a week that would call for a truce and maybe strengthen existing UN peacekeepers until a more robust force can be formed, UN officials said.
”I’m now hopeful we will have such a resolution down very shortly and agreed within the next few days,” British Prime Minister Tony Blair said. ”The purpose of that will be to bring about an immediate ceasefire and then put in place the conditions for the international force to come in.”
But splits between the US and France, a possible leader of the new force, over the timing of a ceasefire have complicated diplomatic efforts to end the fighting.
France’s UN ambassador said he was less confident that a Security Council resolution could be adopted within days.
”Yesterday [Wednesday] morning I was confident that we could have a resolution adopted in the coming days, but by the end of the day I was less confident,” Jean-Marc de la Sabliere said.
The Lebanon war, launched after Hezbollah snatched two Israeli soldiers in a raid across the border on July 12, has coincided with an Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip to recover another captured soldier and halt Palestinian rocket fire.
Israeli forces killed five Palestinian gunmen and three civilians, including a 10-year-old boy, in the Gaza Strip on Thursday, witnesses said. Israel’s offensive in the Strip, which it quit last year, has cost at least 161 Palestinian lives.
Air strikes
Israeli aircraft launched strikes on 70 targets in southern Lebanon and Beirut overnight.
Israeli jets bombed Hezbollah-dominated suburbs of Beirut for the first time in days and hit a bridge in the northern Akkar region, as well as targets in the eastern Bekaa Valley and roads near the Syrian border, a Lebanese security source said.
Planes repeatedly bombed targets around the southern town of Nabatiyeh and shelling cut a road in the southern Bekaa Valley. Heavy Israeli air strikes and shelling also hit the area around the southern village of Blat, north of Marjayoun.
Israel is expanding the ground war in southern Lebanon. Seven brigades, or up to 10 000 troops, were fighting Hezbollah on Thursday, Israeli army radio said.
The army has carved out a ”security zone” of 20 villages in south Lebanon up to 6km from the border and will stay until an international force arrived, Israeli TV said.
UN peacekeepers said the Israelis had made two new incursions into Lebanon in the past 24 hours and kept their hold of five other areas previously seized. Lebanese security sources said Hezbollah fighters attacked Israeli units using anti-tank rockets, mortars and assault rifles.
An Israeli inquiry into Sunday’s bombing of Qana, where up to 54 Lebanese civilians died, said the military made a mistake, but accused Hezbollah of using civilians as human shields.
Amnesty International said the probe was inadequate.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said in remarks published on Thursday he expected a UN vote on a truce next week.
He said US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice did not expect a truce to end fighting in Lebanon in the next few days.
The US and France, diplomats said, are ironing out differences on an initial resolution calling for a truce, a buffer zone and the disarmament of Hezbollah.
But Paris has insisted it will not send troops without a truce and an agreement in principle on the framework for a long-term peace deal by Israel, Hezbollah and the Beirut government. Washington wants a force as soon as fighting stops.
Once fighting ends, talks would begin at the UN on a second resolution for a permanent ceasefire all combatants could accept and authorising an international force in the south.
Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos, on a visit to Damascus, said after meeting President Bashar al-Assad that Syria indicated it was willing to ”play a positive role” in resolving the crisis. — Reuters