Israel yesterday continued efforts to re-establish a "security zone" in southern Lebanon, engaging in combat with the militant Shia Muslim group Hizbullah in or around at least 11 villages along the border strip.
"It seems to be the case that they are going over the border, to roughly the same line as prior to their withdrawal in 2000," a security source said.
"It makes sense in terms of the terrain."
Israel also resumed aerial bombardments of the Shia Muslim southern suburbs of Beirut, after sparing the capital for a week.
They bombed a bridge in the northern Lebanese Akkar region and hit several roads near Lebanon's northern border with Syria.
A dozen air raids targeted the Shia city of Nabatiyeh.
A security source described yesterday's ground fighting and bombardment of the south as less intense than the previous day, and disputed an Israeli television report that 10,000 Israeli soldiers had "taken" 20 Lebanese villages.
The Israeli army said only that it had "several positions of control in several villages".
"Fighting was basically in the same areas as the previous day. The Israelis are consolidating," the security source said.
Witnesses reported seeing hundreds rather than thousands of Israelis cross the border, he added, but thousands may be massed in preparation to cross over.
If Israel intends to retake its former occupation zone, he said, it would need a 3:1 ratio, or about 10,000 troops.
The fighting was heaviest in the villages of Taibeh, Bint Jbail, Ayta ash Shaab and Aytarun.
It encompassed almost all but the western and eastern ends of the 100km-long, UN-defined "blue line", which serves as a border between Lebanon and Israel.
An Israeli missile killed a man, his wife and daughter in Taibeh.
Israel used 155mm artillery batteries placed along its frontier to pound the road between Tyre and Naqoura yesterday morning. Hizbullah frequently fires rockets from near the villages of Mansuri and Bayadah on that road.
"There may be a difference between shelling villages and the Israelis being inside them," the security source reported.
"They can hold it with fire, without necessarily having bodies inside."
Israel and Hizbullah yesterday gave mutually exclusive conditions for an end to the fighting.
Israel said it would remain inside the border strip until a multinational force arrives, and reserve the right to retaliate against Hizbullah even after the deployment of the, as yet, theoretical force.
Hizbullah said it would not agree to a ceasefire until all Israeli troops left Lebanon.
The Hizbullah leader, Hassan Nassrallah, went on Lebanese television last night in an attempt to refute Israeli claims of progress. "We are stronger than Israel. We are still fighting . . . Israel bombs Beirut, we bomb Tel Aviv," he said.
Hospital officials in Tyre yesterday revised downward the number of dead in the bombing of Qana on Sunday, saying that 28 people were killed, including 16 children, not 54 as announced earlier.
The human rights group Amnesty International condemned an Israeli inquiry into Qana as a whitewash.