Israeli strikes kill 42 including 10 civilians

Israeli air strikes killed 42 people across Lebanon yesterday, including 10 civilians hit on a southern bridge, on the sixth day of a bombardment that has wreaked the heaviest destruction in Lebanon for over 20 years. Rescuers also pulled nine bodies from the wreckage of a building in the southern city of Tyre that was bombed on Sunday, raising the death toll since Israel's offensive to 204, all but 14 of them civilian.

Israeli planes hit coastal targets in the north and south, struck Beirut and damaged homes in the east belonging to members of Hizbollah, which fired more rockets deep into Israel.

Blasts rocked Beirut through the day and smoke rose from a blazing fuel depot. Civilian installations, petrol stations and factories elsewhere were also hit, security sources said.

"I can't believe they are doing all this for two captives. This is just an excuse," said Ali Sharara, 21, who fled his home in south Beirut to sleep in a city park for the last two nights.

Hizbollah fired dozens of rockets at the Israeli city of Haifa yesterday and medics said a three-storey building collapsed, wounding two people. Israel closed Haifa's port. Twenty-four Israelis have been killed in the fighting, including 12 civilians hit in rocket attacks.

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.

French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, speaking in Beirut after talks with the Lebanese government, called for an immediate truce on humanitarian grounds.

But Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said his country would pursue its offensive until the two captured soldiers were returned and Lebanese army troops control all of south Lebanon.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Security Council members would start work on a detailed agreement on deploying a multinational security force to south Lebanon.

The United States gave only a guarded welcome to the proposal and Israel said it was premature. "We're at the stage where we want to be sure that Hizbollah is not deployed at our northern border," government spokesman Miri Eisin said.

An Israeli source said Israel may step up attacks in coming days, mindful that its chief ally, the United States, might not resist indefinitely international pressure for a ceasefire.

A UN 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. Three Israeli tanks briefly crossed a few hundred metres into Lebanese territory yesterday afternoon, a UN source said, following a similar incursion overnight in which Israel said Hizbollah positions were destroyed.

Israeli Army Radio, quoting a top officer, said the country would enforce a one-km "free-fire" zone to bar Hizbollah from the border, without keeping troops on the ground.