Israeli warplanes battered Lebanon for the seventh day today, killing 31 people, and more Hizbullah rockets hit northern Israel, killing one person, with no sign that diplomacy would halt the week-old conflict any time soon.
Lebanese civilians run for cover in Dora during attacks by Israeli missiles.
Civilians on both sides were angry about the bombardment but Israel and Hizbullah showed no willingness to halt the fighting, which has killed 235 people in Lebanon and 25 Israelis, or heed proposals for a new UN-backed stabilisation force.
Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Hizbullah, which seized two Israeli soldiers and killed eight in a cross-border raid on July 12th, had co-ordinated the abduction with Iran, enabling Tehran to divert attention from its nuclear programme.
The Lebanese prime minister Fouad Siniora said today that Israel was "opening the gates of hell and madness" on Lebanon.
Israelis, stunned by Hizbullah rocket attacks, said they wanted their army to smash the guerrilla group and most favoured killing its leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, a poll showed.
"We are killing those we need to kill," said Hanna Dehan (60) speaking near the city of Haifa, where eight people were killed on Sunday when a Hizbullah rocket hit a train station.
A rocket attack on the northern Israeli town of Nahariya killed one person today. Other Hizbullah rockets hit Haifa. In Lebanon, nine family members, including children, were killed in an air strike on their house in Aitaroun village. Ten people were killed in strikes in the south and the Bekaa Valley.
Israeli warplanes bombed a Lebanese army barracks east of Beirut, killing 11 soldiers, including four officers, and wounding 30.
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan
A truck carrying medical supplies donated by the United Arab Emirates was hit and its driver killed en route from Damascus.
The Israeli army claimed Hizbullah was smuggling weapons from Syria, but added it did not regard Syria as a target. The United States called for Hizbullah backers Iran and Syria to exert their influence to halt the guerrilla group's rocket fire.
Hizbullah said another of its fighters had been killed, only the fourth such death it has acknowledged in the past week.
While UN peace envoys held talks in Israel, the Israeli army was refusing to rule out a ground invasion, only six years after it ended a 22-year occupation of south Lebanon.
"At this stage we do not think we have to activate massive ground forces into Lebanon but if we have to do this, we will," said Moshe Kaplinsky, Israel's deputy army chief, adding that the current offensive could require weeks to complete its goals.
Mr Olmert said there would be no negotiations with Hizbullah.
Hizbullah dismissed as psychological warfare an assertion by another Israeli general that the group's rocket attacks had eased off because of Israeli attacks on its weapons arsenal.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan called for a bigger, more robust international force to stabilise southern Lebanon and buy time for the Lebanese government to disarm Hizbullah guerrillas.
Israel, bent on driving Hizbullah from the south, says it is too early to discuss such a force. Washington has queried how it could restrain the Islamist group.
"It is urgent that the international community acts to make a difference on the ground," Mr Annan said in Brussels, suggesting a force that would operate differently from toothless UN peacekeepers who have patrolled south Lebanon since 1978.
Israel is also pursuing an offensive in the Gaza Strip after Palestinian militants captured another soldier on June 25th.
The United States ordered five warships to head for Lebanon in its first major evacuation of Americans as thousands of foreigners packed their bags to flee Israeli air strikes. It said it would be able to evacuate 2,400 people tomorrow.
Other European nations mustered boats and planes for their stranded nationals. Some 100,000 Lebanese have fled their homes.
UN agencies are pulling non-essential staff and family members from Lebanon, but relief workers are staying and more are going in, humanitarian aid chief Jan Egeland said.
Lebanon wants an immediate ceasefire, but world powers have said Hizbullah must first free the two soldiers and stop cross-border attacks. Israel also demands that Hizbullah disarm in line with UN Security Council resolutions.
The Beirut government is too weak and divided to force Hizbullah to yield to such demands. The Shia group wants to swap the soldiers for Lebanese and Arabs in Israeli jails.
Agencies