Israel’s military struck Lebanon’s largest Palestinian refugee camp early today, killing at least two people and wounding five, officials said. In the eastern Bekaa Valley five people were killed and two feared dead in an Israeli raid.

ISRAELI air strikes reduced entire apartment buildings to rubble and plunged parts of the Lebanese capital of Beirut into darkness in a ferocious response to a Hezbollah attack.

ANTI-SYRIAN rivals battled it out at the ballot boxes yesterday as voters crowded polling stations to vote in the most crucial round of Lebanon’s parliamentary elections.

The withdrawal of Syrian troops to Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa Valley will be completed by the end of March, the presidents of both countries agreed today.

Syria will “soon” take steps to withdraw its army from Lebanese areas in accordance with a 1989 agreement, the Arab League chief said today.