The United Nations refugee agency has said that around 2,000 people have fled Syria across the Lebanese border in the last two days.

A French reporter who was wounded in the Syrian city of Homs appealed for urgent medical attention and asked to be evacuated quickly, in a video posted by anti-regime activists on the internet.

The Syrian army shot dead at least five people in a town near the Lebanese border and stormed another town near Turkey's border, activists said.

Lebanese prime minister Fuad Saniora today denounced what he called Israel’s violation of the Lebanese border, an act that provoked the first exchange of fire between the two countries’ forces since just after last year’s war between Hezbollah and Israel.

US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice will lobby Israeli leaders today in an attempt to silence the guns and halt the bloodshed on both sides of the Lebanese border.

Israeli troops took control of a village just across the Lebanese border today, after the area was pounded by bombs and artillery through the night.

It has been reported that two Israeli soldiers have been killed in clashes with Hezbollah guerrillas inside the Lebanese border with Israel.

Hezbollah guerrillas clashed with Israeli soldiers on the southern Lebanese border today, reviving a two-day old confrontation that saw some of the heaviest fighting in years.

An explosion has rocked a northern Israeli town along the Lebanese border, the army said.

Hezbollah and Israeli forces exchanged barrages of shells and rockets across the Lebanese border today and Israeli warplanes struck guerrilla positions in the heaviest clash in months between the two sides.

Israel will not mount a unilateral attack aimed at destroying Iran’s nuclear capability, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said in a CNN-TV interview.

Lebanese officials said Syrian troops will begin pulling back toward the Syrian border today, as the leader of the Hezbollah militant group called for a demonstration in Beirut to counter weeks of anti-Syrian protests.

WITH regard to your editorial about the Russian school siege (Irish Examiner, Sept 2), while I agree that this kind of action is indeed vile, I would like to point out that it is most definitely not new.

THE new leader of Hamas said yesterday the group had no plans to attack American targets but would try to kill Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in retaliation for the death of their spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.