Israeli jets pounded Lebanon and troops battled Hezbollah guerrillas yesterday while world powers struggled for a plan to end a war that Beirut said has killed 900 people and wounded 3,000.

 

Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora said a third of the casualties in the 23-day-old conflict were children under 12. He said a million Lebanese, a quarter of the population, had been displaced and the country's infrastructure devastated.

 

His remarks were in a video message to a meeting of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) in Malaysia. His death toll was higher than the estimated toll of at least 683.

 

Fifty-six Israelis, including 37 soldiers, have been killed in the conflict, and Al-Arabiya television said two more Israeli soldiers died in fighting yesterday. A Lebanese security source said that 80 Hezbollah fighters had been killed so far well below the Israeli estimate of 300-400.

 

The US, France and Britain hope for a UN Security Council resolution within a week that would call for a truce and maybe strengthen existing UN peacekeepers until a more robust force can be formed, UN officials said.

 

"I'm now hopeful we will have such a resolution down very shortly and agreed within the next few days," British Prime Minister Tony Blair said in London. "The purpose of that will be to bring about an immediate ceasefire and then put in place the conditions for the international force to come in."

 

But splits between the US and France, a possible leader of the new force, over the timing of a ceasefire have complicated diplomatic efforts to end the fighting.

 

Israeli aircraft launched strikes on 70 targets in southern Lebanon and Beirut overnight, an Israeli army spokeswoman said.

 

Hezbollah, showing it can still fight after 23 days of Israeli bombardment, fired 70 rockets into Israel yesterday, after showering the Jewish state with a record 231 missiles the previous day in salvoes that killed one person and wounded 124.

 

No casualties were reported in the latest rocket strikes.

 

The Lebanon war, launched after Hezbollah snatched two Israeli soldiers in a raid across the border on July 12, has coincided with an Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip to recover another captured soldier and halt Palestinian rocket fire.

 

Israeli forces killed five Palestinian gunmen and three civilians, including a 10-year-old boy, in the Gaza Strip yesterday, witnesses said. Israel's offensive in the Strip it quit last year has cost at least 161 Palestinian lives.

 

Israeli jets bombed Hezbollah-dominated suburbs of Beirut for the first time in days and hit a bridge in the northern Akkar region, as well as targets in the eastern Bekaa Valley and roads near the Syrian border, a Lebanese security source said.

 

Planes repeatedly bombed targets around the southern town of Nabatiyeh and shelling cut a road in the southern Bekaa Valley. Heavy Israeli air strikes and shelling also hit the area around the southern village of Blat, north of Marjayoun.

 

Israel is expanding the ground war in southern Lebanon, where seven brigades, or up to 10,000 troops, were fighting Hezbollah yesterday, Israeli army radio said. The UN force in southern Lebanon said Israeli troops were on the ground in five main areas in the south.

 

(China Daily August 4, 2006)