Lebanon’s prime minister, caught in a vice of conflicting demands by Israel and Syria, side-stepped Israeli insistence that international forces be deployed on the Syrian border and said today that Lebanese troops already there posed no threat to its prickly Arab neighbour.

At least 12 Lebanese villagers, including women and children, were killed today in what appeared to be an Israeli airstrike on a convoy of vehicles fleeing a village near the border with Israel in southern Lebanon, a witness said.