Israeli warplanes pounded Lebanon on Tuesday, killing at least 13 people, as diplomatic efforts brought no signs of an early end to the week-old assault launched in retaliation against Hizbollah attacks.
BEIRUT: Israeli warplanes pounded Lebanon on Tuesday, killing at least 13 people, as diplomatic efforts brought no signs of an early end to the week-old assault launched in retaliation against Hizbollah attacks.
Nine civilians, all from one family and including children, were killed and four wounded in an air strike that destroyed a house in the south Lebanese village of Aitaroun.
Four others died in strikes elsewhere in the south. Israeli aircraft also struck Beirut's southern suburbs and an army position overlooking the capital as well as two other Lebanese towns.
After battering the country from the air, Israel's army refused to rule out a massive ground invasion of south Lebanon only six years after it ended its occupation of the area.
"At this stage we do not think we have to activate massive ground forces into Lebanon but if we have to do this, we will. We are not ruling it out," Moshe Kaplinsky, Israel's deputy army chief, told Israel Radio.
He said the offensive would end within a few weeks, adding that Israel needed more time to complete "very clear goals".
"The fighting in Lebanon will end within a few weeks. We will not take months," Kaplinsky said.
A poll in the mass circulation Yedioth Ahronoth daily showed a vast majority of Israelis supported the offensive in Lebanon and many believed the Hizbollah leader should be assassinated.
It showed 86 percent of Israelis believed the army's attacks on Lebanon were justified.
Thousands of foreigners fled Lebanon -- some by road to Syria, others seeking places on U.S. and European ships after Beirut's international airport was closed by Israeli fire.
About 100,000 Lebanese have also fled their homes and moved to safer areas to escape the violence.
The fighting was triggered when Hizbollah, the guerrilla group which is backed by Syria and Iran and is part of Lebanon's government, seized two Israeli soldiers and killed eight in a cross-border raid on northern Israel on July 12.
The Israeli retaliation has killed 217 people, all but 14 of them civilians, and inflicted the heaviest destruction in Lebanon for two decades, with attacks targeting ports, roads, bridges, factories and petrol stations.
Hizbollah responded by attacking a naval vessel off Beirut and firing hundreds of rockets at northern Israel, killing 24 people, 12 of them civilians.
The Jewish state is also engaged in a military offensive in the Gaza Strip after Palestinian militants captured another soldier on June 25.
CEASEFIRE: Lebanon has repeatedly called for an immediate ceasefire, but world powers said any solution to the crisis must include the release of the two soldiers. Israel also wants Hizbollah to disarm in line with United Nations Security Council resolutions.
The Beirut government is too fragile to pressure Hizbollah to yield to such demands.
The Shi'ite Muslim guerrilla group wants to swap the two soldiers with Lebanese and Arab prisoners in Israeli jails.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said on Monday his country would pursue its offensive until the two soldiers were returned and the Lebanese army controlled all of south Lebanon.
An Israeli government source said Israel may step up attacks in coming days, mindful its chief ally, the United States, might not resist indefinitely international pressure for a ceasefire.
Washington has backed Israel's right to self-defence.
A U.N. team sent to Lebanon to seek a solution to the fighting said it had made a promising start but that more diplomacy was needed before there could be any optimism.
A Hizbollah spokesman told Reuters the group had "not received any suggestions for a ceasefire".
British Prime Minister Tony Blair and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan urged the U.N. Security Council to deploy a security force in Lebanon but the United States frowned on the idea.
French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, speaking in Beirut after talks with the Lebanese government, called for an immediate truce on humanitarian grounds.
Balls of fire and clouds of smoke billowed from a Lebanese army position east of Beirut after repeated Israeli air strikes in the early hours of Tuesday and several soldiers were wounded, a security source said.
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
)
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
)
)
)
)
)
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}