Lebanese troops deployed in south Lebanon on Thursday, linking up with United Nations peacekeepers to take control of Hezbollah strongholds as Israeli forces pulled back after their 34-day war with the guerrillas. Hezbollah fighters melted away as the troops crossed the Litani River, about 20km from the Israeli border, to take over a region the army has not controlled for decades.
Israeli forces began leaving parts of south Lebanon on Tuesday as a United Nations truce largely held for a second day and the Lebanese army prepared to move south. Thousands of refugees who had fled the month-long war between Israel and Hezbollah headed home to battered villages in the south.
The United States and Lebanon said on Friday a deal on a United Nations resolution to end Israel’s month-old war with Hezbollah guerrillas is in sight. But Israel told the US it would not automatically accept any such resolution, Israeli television said. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert also ordered the army to expand its ground offensive.
Israeli air raids killed 11 people in north Lebanon on Friday as the United States and France strove to clinch a draft United Nations resolution to end the month-old war between Israel and Hezbollah guerrillas. The bombing of a bridge near the border with Syria wounded 18 people, hospital staff said.
Lebanon’s prime minister, choking back tears, demanded a "quick and decisive ceasefire" on Monday after an Israeli air raid that he at first said killed more than 40 civilians sheltering from fighting in a southern village. Later, though, he said that only one person had been killed. Air raids elsewhere killed at least 24 Lebanese.
Israeli bombs killed at least 18 civilians in Lebanon and cut a vital aid lifeline to the south on Monday in renewed fighting after diplomatic efforts to end the 27-day-old war stalled. Hezbollah guerrillas responded by firing more rockets into northern Israel, wounding one person.
Israeli air strikes killed 14 civilians in Lebanon and Hezbollah battled Israeli ground troops on Monday as the United Nations Security Council failed to agree on a draft resolution seeking to end 27 days of fighting. Opposition from Lebanon caused the United States and France to delay a vote on the resolution also aimed at setting terms to settle the Israel-Hezbollah conflict.
Israeli jets pounded Hezbollah’s Beirut stronghold and troops battled the guerrillas in the south on Thursday while world powers struggled to come up with a plan to stop a war now in its fourth week. The United States, France and Britain hope for a United Nations Security Council resolution within a week that would call for a truce and perhaps beef up existing United Nations peacekeepers.
Hezbollah fired more rockets into Israel on Wednesday than on any previous day of the 22-day-old war, after helicopter-borne commandos attacked guerrilla targets in Israel’s deepest raid into Lebanon. Air strikes in support of the helicopter raid in the Hezbollah stronghold of Baalbek in north-eastern Lebanon killed 19 people, including four children.
Israel battered Lebanon on Friday, killing 11 people as waves of air raids struck villages in the hills behind the southern port of Tyre and hundreds of artillery rounds crashed across the border.