Israeli defence minister Amir Peretz told top military officers yesterday evening to begin preparing to expand Israel's ground invasion of south Lebanon all the way to the Litani river, some 20-30 km north of Israel's border with Lebanon.
Mr Peretz's directive, which will require cabinet approval before implementation, came shortly after eight Israeli civilians were killed in Hizbullah rocket attacks on towns in northern Israel. As of yesterday, the Israeli military said it had taken up positions some 8 km inside south Lebanon and was clearing a no-go zone to keep Hizbullah fighters away from the border.
As world powers struggled to agree on a UN resolution to end the fighting, both sides threatened to escalate the war.
In a televised speech, Hizbullah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said his organisation would target Tel Aviv if Israel attacked central Beirut. Israel vowed to destroy Lebanon's infrastructure if the threat was carried out.
"If you strike Beirut, the Islamic Resistance will strike Tel Aviv and it is able to do so," Nasrallah said, in the first apparent confirmation that Hizbullah has longer-range missiles capable of hitting the city 130 km (80 miles) from the border.
Lebanese prime minister Fouad Siniora said the war had killed 900 people in his country and wounded 3,000, with a third of the casualties children under 12.
He said a million Lebanese, a quarter of the population, had been displaced and infrastructure devastated.
An investigation by the Israeli army into the killing of 28 civilians in an air raid on the Lebanese village of Qana last Sunday admitted the targeting of the building in which the civilians were taking shelter was a mistake, but blamed Hizbullah for using civilians as shields for their rocket attacks.
However, the US-based organisation Human Rights Watch said: "In some instances, Israeli forces appear to have deliberately targeted civilians . . . the failures cannot be dismissed as mere accident and cannot be blamed on wrongful Hizbullah practices. In some cases, these attacks constitute war crimes."
Israeli forces resumed aerial bombardments of the Shia Muslim suburbs of Beirut yesterday, 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.
On the diplomatic front, France's UN ambassador said he was now less confident of an early Security Council resolution.