Beirut : Israeli troops battled Hezbollah across southern Lebanon yesterday and air strikes battered Beirut's suburbs as the Israeli army pressed on with its offensive in the hours until a UN-brokered truce begins.
Al Arabiya television reported that seven Israeli soldiers were killed in fighting in south Lebanon.
Israeli air raids killed at least 17 people, and more than 200 rockets fired by Hezbollah hit northern Israel, killing a 70-year-old man and wounding at least 18 people. Some rockets hit the centre of Israel's port city of Haifa but there were no immediate reports of casualties.
Saturday was the deadliest day of the month-old war for the Israeli army, with 19 soldiers killed and five missing and feared dead after their helicopter was shot down by Hezbollah.
Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni repeated Israel's position that its troops would only pull out when a peacekeeping force arrived, which the UN said could take up to 10 days.
"Israel will leave in tandem with the deployment south of the Lebanese army along with the international force not a situation where we see that a Lebanese army soldier has arrived and now they tell us to leave," she told reporters.
The resolution approved by the Security Council on Friday calls for a "full cessation of hostilities" and for Israel to withdraw its troops "at the earliest". As they withdraw, 15,000 Lebanese soldiers and an expanded international force of 15,000 foreign troops, likely to be led by France, will be deployed.
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said on Saturday that his fighters would observe a truce but reserved the right to fight Israeli soldiers still on Lebanese soil.
Lebanon rejected initial drafts of a UN resolution to end the fighting because they did not call for an immediate Israeli withdrawal.
Israeli aircraft attacked targets in more than 50 villages and towns, Lebanese security sources said, killing at least eight people in southern Lebanon and seven in the Bekaa Valley.
Several explosions shook Beirut and thick white smoke billowed over the Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs. The attack destroyed 11 residential buildings. Witnesses and security sources said two people were killed, both children.
An air raid on a village in southern Lebanon hit a house with 15 people inside, Lebanese security sources said. The number of dead or wounded was not yet known, they said.
'Fighting should end now'
Israel widened its offensive on Friday despite the UN resolution. Some 30,000 Israeli troops are in Lebanon.
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said fighting should end immediately to spare civilians.
"The fighting should stop now to respect the spirit and intent of the Security Council decision, the object of which was to save civilian lives, to spare the pain and suffering that the civilians on both sides are living through," Annan said.
At least 1,082 people in Lebanon and 144 Israelis, including 104 soldiers, have been killed in the war.
Analysts cautioned that a truce may not hold, particularly with Israeli troops still in Lebanon.
"I think this talk of a ceasefire going into effect [today] seems to be highly exaggerated and dubious," said Mouin Rabbani, senior Middle East analyst with the International Crisis Group.
"It seems that Israel's strategy has been to establish positions as far north as possible to implement a fighting withdrawal, meaning that they will try to take on as much of Hezbollah as they can as they work their way south."
Israel's Haaretz newspaper reported that the Israeli government was willing to discuss a possible release of Hezbollah prisoners in exchange for the freeing of two Israeli soldiers whose capture on July 12 sparked the war.
The Israeli military said it had launched more than 100 air strikes in Lebanon since Friday evening, attacking more than 50 Hezbollah command stations, two missile launchers, and two vehicles carrying weapons from Syria to the Bekaa valley.
Israel said it had killed 40 Hezbollah fighters in the past 24 hours.
Hezbollah denied this but acknowledged the death of one more of its fighters yesterday.
