The US Army has opened a review of casualty reports on American soldiers killed in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere since 2001, a response to complaints that it has not always given families accurate information.

Israeli warplanes struck three buildings in a village near the market town of Nabatiyeh in southern Lebanon as they renewed attacks on suspected Hezbollah targets today, killing three people and wounding nine, including four children, Lebanese security officials said.

The father of an Israeli soldier snatched by Lebanese guerrillas today appealed to the captors to make their demands known so he can at least be assured his son is alive.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas today said Israel’s incursion into Lebanon had raised the spectre of a large-scale Middle East war and urged world powers to intervene “to stop this serious deterioration”.

Israeli leaders approved new incursions into the Gaza Strip, security officials said today, after the Hamas leader said he would not free an Israeli soldier whose capture by Palestinian militants led to a bloody 13-day confrontation.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said today that freeing Palestinian prisoners in exchange for a captured Israeli soldier would be a “major mistake”.

Israeli aircraft struck northern and southern Gaza today as thousands of troops, backed by warplanes and tanks, forged into the coastal strip in an operation meant to pummel Palestinian militants into releasing an Israeli soldier.

Palestinians dug in behind walls and and embankments in the southern Gaza Strip today after Israel sent in troops and tanks.

Prime minister Ehud Olmert today said after the launch of a military incursion into Gaza that Israel wouldn’t balk at “extreme action” to bring home a soldier captured by Palestinian militants.

The US-led coalition today said it would investigate an attack on one of its bases in southern Afghanistan that killed a US and a Canadian soldier, including whether any of the casualties were caused by friendly fire.

A US Marine, who resurfaced in Lebanon nearly three weeks after he vanished in a reported kidnapping in Iraq, is doing well and recovering at a US military hospital in Germany, a Marine spokesman said today.

US forces today launched a massive operation in Iraq to crush insurgents and capture senior figures from Saddam Hussein’s fallen regime.

American soldiers on the road to Baghdad fought bloody street-to-street battles with Iraqi forces loyal to Saddam Hussein while coalition aircraft bombed southeastern Iraq to open the way for a possible new front in the crucial battle for Baghdad.