The international committee monitoring the truce in south Lebanon met in the border town of Naqoura yesterday amid a surge in violence which has left 10 people dead and nearly 50 wounded since Monday. The committee, representative of Lebanon, Israel, Syria, France and the US, convened at the headquarters of the United Nations peacekeeping forces.
Israeli warplanes carried out a series of raids yesterday over south and east Lebanon, injuring four civilians including two children, in response to a rocket attack on northern Israel by Hizbullah guerrillas the previous day.
Lebanon had filed three complaints to the committee, including one over the shelling of Sidon by the Israeli-allied South Lebanon Army (SLA) on Monday. Six civilians were killed and 38 others wounded in the attack.
Israel lodged three protests, including one over a roadside bombing in the Israeli-occupied border zone in southern Lebanon on Monday which killed three people and prompted the shelling of Sidon.
Israel accused the Iranian-backed Hizbullah guerrilla group of the bombing. Hizbullah denied responsibility.
"Israel, by shelling Sidon, has violated the April accord by deliberately shelling civilians far from the front line," a Lebanese government official said before the meeting.
"Israel is assassinating the April accord. This meeting will be a test. We want Israel to be denounced and guarantees for such acts not to be repeated."
Hizbullah said it carried out the attack to avenge the deaths of the six civilians killed in the Lebanese city of Sidon when Israel's proxy militia, the South Lebanon Army (SLA), shelled the city centre on Monday.
The April 1996 agreement which put an end to Israel's 17day offensive against Hizbullah in Lebanon banned combatants from targeting civilians or launching attacks from civilian areas.
A Foreign Ministry official said Lebanon was preparing to file a new complaint over a series of Israeli air strikes yesterday. Four civilians, including two children, were wounded in a raid on the eastern Bekaa valley while two other strikes destroyed a high-tension electricity pylon on a hill south of Beirut and damaged a car south of Sidon.
Israel described the strikes as "limited" retaliation for a rocket attack by Hizbullah on northern Israel on Tuesday, which left one Israeli wounded.
Since the beginning of the year, 27 Lebanese civilians have been killed and 95 wounded in south Lebanon, while one person was wounded in northern Israel.
The French Foreign Minister, Mr Hubert Vedrine, asked his Lebanese counterpart, Mr Fares Bweiz, to give the truce committee increased powers in such matters, the Lebanese foreign ministry said. Mr Bweiz said on Tuesday that Lebanon would go to the UN Security Council if the committee were unable to re-establish calm in southern Lebanon.
The Foreign Minister said he told his French counterpart: "Every time it has a domestic problem, the Jewish state creates problems in southern Lebanon."
In Cairo the Egyptian Foreign Minister, Mr Amr Mussa, yesterday condemned Israeli attacks in southern Lebanon and called for the Jewish state to withdraw all its forces from its northern neighbour.