Fighting rages ahead of ceasefire debate

Hezbollah guerrillas unleashed their deadliest barrage of rockets yet into northern Israel, killing at least 15 people, while Israeli bombardment killed at least 14 people in southern Lebanon as fighting only intensified despite a draft UN ceasefire resolution.

Hezbollah and its allies rejected the draft resolution, saying its terms for a halt in fighting do not address Lebanon’s demands, in a signal that the month-long battle will burn on.

Both sides appeared to be aiming to inflict maximum damage in the few days before the US-French draft resolution is voted on by the UN Security Council.

Hezbollah fired a barrage of rockets tonight on the port city of Haifa, killing at least three people, in the heaviest attack on Israel’s third-largest city since fighting began.

Officials said more than 40 people were injured. A Haifa fire department spokesman said one crowded residential district suffered five or six hits and there were many casualties.

Hezbollah also fired a volley of 80 rockets at several other Israeli towns. One of them made a direct hit on a crowd of people at the entrance of the communal farm of Kfar Giladi, killing 12 soldiers, rescue workers said.

It was the highest toll from a rocket attack since the conflict began on July 12. A spokesman for the Magen David Adom rescue service said the 12 victims were soldiers.

Other rockets hit the nearby town of Kiryat Shemona, damaging a synagogue.

When word of the rocket strike reached the Israeli cabinet during its weekly meeting, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said: ”Lucky that we are dealing with Hezbollah today, and not in another two or three years.”

In southern Lebanon, dozens of Israeli strikes hit communities and roads, with some villages bombed continually for half an hour, security officials said. Explosions rang across Beirut as warplanes fired more than six missiles into the capital’s southern districts.

Ground fighting also raged along a stretch of territory on the southern Lebanese border that the Israeli army has invaded.

The US-French resolution for a ceasefire marked a significant advance after weeks of stalled diplomacy aimed at ending the conflict, but getting the two sides, particularly Hezbollah, to sign on will likely require a greater push.

Israel has said it won’t halt its offensive until Hezbollah rockets are silenced.

The plan also envisions a second resolution in a week or two that would authorise an international military force for the Israel-Lebanon frontier and the creation of a large buffer zone in southern Lebanon, monitored by the Lebanese army and international peacekeepers.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice stressed the draft resolution was aimed at stopping the large-scale violence to allow a focus on the underlying problems in the conflict.

“It’s the first step, not the only step,” she said at a news conference in Washington.

Lebanon’s parliament speaker, who represents Hezbollah in negotiations, said the plan was unacceptable, as it would leave Israeli troops in Lebanon and does not deal with Beirut’s key demands: a release of prisoners held by Israel and moves to resolve a dispute over a piece of border territory.

“If Israel has not won the war but still gets all this, what would have happened had they won?” Nabih Berri said. ”Lebanon, all of Lebanon, rejects any talks and any draft resolution” that do not address the Lebanese demands, he said.

Hezbollah’s two key allies, Iran and Syria, also rejected the resolution, suggesting they back a continued fight by the guerrillas.

In the day’s deadliest Israeli strike in Lebanon, missiles also flattened a house in the village of Ansar, near the southern market town of Nabatiyeh, killing a man and four of his relatives, Lebanese security officials said.

Another strike overnight killed three people in al-Jibbain, a village about two miles from the Israeli border, civil defence officials said.

A Lebanese army intelligence official was killed and seven soldiers were wounded in an Israeli strike on Mansouri, about six miles south of the port city of Tyre on the Mediterranean coast, security officials said.

They said another five Lebanese soldiers were wounded in Debbin, about six miles north of the Israeli border.

Several blasts hit around Tyre.

One strike killed a man sitting drinking coffee, according to Dr Amir Farhar, at a Tyre hospital. A rocket fired by a pilotless aircraft blasted a van carrying bread out of the city, killing its driver, said Salam Daher, a civil defence official in the southern port city.

In the eastern Bekaa Valley, an Israeli drone struck a truck, killing a man inside, police officials said.

Another person was killed in the town of Naqoura, near the border on the Mediterranean coast.

In Naqoura and several villages near Tyre, residents called rescue officials to report more people trapped under the rubble of crushed buildings, but crews could not retrieve the dead because of continued bombardment.

“We don’t know how many and we can’t get there,” Daher said.

In a statement, Hezbollah announced the deaths of three fighters, but did not say when or where they were killed.

Israel also bombed two camps of a Palestinian militant group in Lebanon, the Syrian-backed Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command. The group reported one person killed in the attack.

Hezbollah’s long-range missile-launchers are in the areas of Tyre and Sidon, but there was no indication that the raging air assault of the last 24 hours has significantly eroded Hezbollah’s capabilities to hit deep into Israel, said Ryszard Morczynski, a UN peacekeeping official in Naqoura.

Arab foreign ministers were due to gather in Beirut for a crucial meeting tomorrow that could see a stormy debate over the draft UN resolution.

Arab moderates Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia are eager to see a stop to the fighting, but they also cannot be seen to be forcing a surrender on Hezbollah, amid widespread public anger at home, directed at Arab governments for not supporting the guerrillas in their fight.

For Hezbollah, the resolution would be a tough pill to swallow, particularly language calling for the ”unconditional release” of two Israeli soldiers captured by the guerrillas in a cross-border raid on July 12. The abduction prompted the Israeli onslaught in Lebanon.

A ceasefire now would also open the way for the deployment of an international force whose chief aim would be to ensure Hezbollah is disarmed, or at least that its weapons are moved far from the Israeli border.

The draft resolution makes only vague promises to eventually address the two key Lebanese demands, for a prisoner release and the resolution of Lebanon’s claims on Chebaa Farms, a tiny border region controlled by Israel.

The ceasefire terms would also leave Israeli troops in Lebanon for the time being, prompting Hezbollah rejection.

So far, at least 591 people have died in Lebanon, including 508 civilians, 29 members of the army, one Palestinian militant and 53 guerrillas acknowledged dead by Hezbollah.

Israeli security officials told the cabinet today they had confirmed the deaths of 165 Hezbollah fighters and estimated 200 more had been killed, according to a participant in the meeting.

Today’s strikes brought to 94 the number of Israelis, 47 of them killed by rocket attacks and the rest soldiers, killed in the fighting.