Syrian border posts registered another 28,000 people leaving Lebanon, but their nationalities were not yet recorded.

Meanwhile, United Nations peacekeeping force in South Lebanon said on Monday it was unable to supply food and water to its troops or deliver humanitarian aid to civilians because Israel would not guarantee their safe passage.

The IDF have not responded to the UN's repeated requests to secure the safe transport of convoys carrying supplies to its positions, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) said in a statement.

South Lebanon, which borders Israel, has been worst-hit in the Israel Defense Forces' six-day-old offensive against Hezbollah after the guerrilla group's capture of two IDF soldiers in a cross-border attack.

"Following a conversation between the UN Secretary-General and the prime minister of Israel ... we received assurances that UNIFIL will be allowed freedom of movement, but this pledge has not yet been implemented on the ground," the statement said.

Shrapnel from IDF tank shells has seriously wounded an Indian soldier, the statement added, describing the situation at its positions as critical.

In one incident, Hezbollah launched rockets from near a village and the IDF responded by firing twice on the area, as UNIFIL troops were escorting 283 villagers to the port city of Tyre, the statement said.

UNIFIL was created in 1978 after Israel's first major incursion into southern Lebanon and has been there ever since.

The statement said Israel has also yet to respond to repeated requests for safe passage to deliver humanitarian assistance from Tyre to two border villages.

Prime Minister of Lebanon, Fouad Siniora, said in an interview Monday that Israel has inflicted billions of dollars of damage on Lebanon's infrastructure and is trying to set the country back 50 years.

"Israel now is a terrorist country that is committing every day a terrorist act," Siniora said. "What Israel has been doing is cutting the country to pieces."

Siniora, the head of Lebanon's first anti-Syrian government in nearly two decades, said material losses were in the billions of dollars, on top of losses to businesses and lost investment.

Siniora has distanced his government from Hezbollah's cross-border attack last week and has said his government should not be held responsible for it.

Hezbollah guerrillas have fired rockets deep into northern Israel since the abduction, killing 12 Israeli civilians in addition to eight soldiers who died in the initial Hezbollah attack and four sailors who died in a Hezbollah rocket attack on an Israeli warship.

"We are paying the price for something we didn't do," said Siniora, adding that 100,000 people had left their homes due to fighting.

Siniora fought back tears on Saturday when he described Lebanon as a "disaster zone" and called for aid and a ceasefire.

Amira el-Akhras and the children were killed on Sunday in the Israeli air strike. Ali el-Akhras, 36, had been in critical condition in hospital.

A spokesman for the family said Monday morning that Canada's Department of Foreign Affairs had told him that Ali el-Akhras had succumbed to his injuries in a Lebanese hospital. However, family members in Montreal maintain he is still alive.

At a news conference Monday, members of the el-Akhras family condemned Israel, calling the attacks "massacres." They accused Israelis of neglecting to distinguish between children, women and the elderly and soldiers when carrying out attacks.

They called on Prime Minister Stephen Harper to put pressure on Israel to stop the violence in the Middle East, and condemned Harper's earlier comments about Israel's stand in the current conflict.

Hussein el-Akhras, who is related to the victims, told reporters that Canada's Department of Foreign Affairs has not made contact with the family to offer condolences or help.

He called for Canada to act faster in helping stranded Canadians get out of Lebanon.

"Everyone says it's the fault of Hezbollah. Hezbollah is our protector," argued Meyssoun el-Akhras, who said that she is proud to carry a Canadian passport. She said justice and peace are values that Canada has long stood for, but that those values are seriously compromised as long as Canada does not put political pressure on Israel.

'Deep sorrow'

The Israeli Embassy in Ottawa issued a news release Monday expressing its "deep sorrow" over the death of the Canadians.

Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni told Foreign Minister Peter MacKay on Sunday "that Israel will be ready to assist in the efforts to safely transport Canadian nationals out of Lebanon," the release said.

"Israel is doing its utmost to avoid civilian casualties and to target Hezbollah strategic positions, command posts and weapons depots," it said.

Among the others killed when the building collapsed was the father's uncle, also named Ali el-Akhras, who came to Montreal from Lebanon 15 years ago. His wife, Saada el-Akhras, was among the injured.

In Montreal, where the younger Ali el-Akhras ran a pharmacy in Montreal's Snowdon district at Queen Mary Road and Snowdon Street, members of the Lebanese community gathered to grieve.

"While recognizing Israel's security concerns and its legitimate right to self defense, the EU calls on Israel not to act in a disproportionate manner and with measures contrary to international humanitarian law," read the document.

"Unjustified measures and continued escalation will only aggravate the vicious circle of violence and retribution," it warned.

The ministers appealed for restraint, saying "a de-escalation of the current situation is imperative."

They urged all parties concerned to create conditions for a sustainable cessation of violence and expressed support for all diplomatic efforts to that effect.

The ministers also expressed support for Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora and stressed the need for the government to restore sovereignty over the whole of the Lebanese territory.

They also urged respect for Lebanon's sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence, while demanding Hezbollah to disband and disarm.

How might the Israelis and their Bush-Cheney allies escalate to a Middle East regional war? A linear scenario is that, after further bombardment of Israel by rockets allegedly made in Iran and allegedly delivered with the connivance of Syria, the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) lashes out at Damascus and Teheran. Syrian and Iranian retaliatory measures would then be seized upon by the Bush-Cheney regime as a pretext for US entry into the war. Here the US would be openly dragged into war as the tail of the Israeli dog. But this is a deeply flawed scenario, sure to generate huge waves of resentment against the Israelis and their US partners as the body bags begin to come home.

False flag scenarios would be entirely more effective from the point of view of the war planners. CNN and MSNBC coverage this Saturday morning has been stressing the situation of the 25,000 Americans now stuck in Lebanon. These Americans are being invited to register with the US consulates for possible evacuation. The State Department and the US military have been remarkably slow to begin such an evacuation.

One possible provocation scenario to bring the US into the war is that a helicopter carrying US citizens being evacuated out of Lebanon is hit by a missile and destroyed, killing all on board. The missile might be fired by the Israelis or by their allies among the fascist Lebanese Phalangists. The Israelis would announce that the helicopter had been destroyed by Hezbollah, opening the way for a hysterical campaign by Fox News and the rest of the neocon mass brainwashing apparatus to secure an early US attack on Syria and Iran.

An alternative: a group of Arabic-speaking Israeli Mossad or Shin Beth special forces, or a group of Phalangist militia round up a few dozen Americans and machine-gun them to death. The controlled media then blame the massacre on Hezbolllah, thus stampeding the US population into war.

The "Christian" Phalangist (or "Kataeb Party") have long been a willing cat's paw for the US and Israelis in Lebanon. It was the Phalangists, controlled by the Gemayel family, who did most of the actual killing at the infamous Tel-al-Zaatar massacre in August 1976, in the midst of the Kissinger-provoked Lebanese civil war. The Phalangists in that case did the dirty work under the supervision of the Israelis. Although the controlled media have been silent about the Phalange, it is clear that they are still available for dirty operations.

In an ominous sign, CNN broadcasts have featured first-person interviews with Caroline Shamoun, supposedly an American stuck in Lebanon. This reference recalls Camille Chamoun, the CIA puppet president of Lebanon who called in US forces in 1958. The goal of the current campaign is manifestly to call US forces to intervene into a Lebanon-centered crisis once again.

All peace-loving governments and all Americans of good will should make it clear that they hold the Israeli Mossad, Shin Beth, and Israeli Defense Forces directly responsible for the safety and welfare of the Americans trapped in Lebanon by the present aggression. Any atrocities against these Americans cannot be attributed to Hezbollah, Syria, or Iran, none of whom has any conceivable interest in provoking the US into an attack. It is Israel and Cheney who have such an interest, as is likely to have been discussed during Olmert's visit to the US in May and Netanyahu's visit here in June.

It is imperative that the US and world populations be inoculated against the provocation scenarios now being propagandized by CNN, MSNBC, and the rest of the controlled media.

Nationals of other countries, too, fled the region over the past days, as Israel sent ground troops into Lebanon briefly and Hezbollah rockets knocked down a three-story house in northern Israel. However, there were signs of movement on the diplomatic front to end the worst fighting in 24 years.

By nightfall Monday, 209 Lebanese had been reported killed in the six days of fighting. The latest victims - nine civilians, including two children - died in an afternoon airstrike on a bridge near the southern port city of Sidon, Lebanese officials said. At least 24 Israelis have been killed.

On the sixth day of its major offensive in Lebanon, Israel was allowing evacuation ships through its blockade of the country. France and Italy moved hundreds of their citizens and other Europeans out Monday on a Greek cruise liner. An Italian ship left earlier with 350 people, and other governments were organizing pullouts by land to Syria.

"This first mission will take out the most urgent cases - children, the elderly and the sick. The ferry will return for further shuttles in the days ahead," he said.

The operation was being organised in liaison with the Lebanese authorities and Israel was being kept informed, he
said.

Meanwhile, French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin was going to Beirut Monday to express France's support for the Lebanese people in the face of Israeli attacks, President Jacques Chirac's office said.

Chirac, currently attending the G8 summit in Saint Petersburg, "has decided to send the prime minister to Beirut today to meet Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora and convey to him the support of France and the solidarity of the French people with the Lebanese people in their ordeal," the president's office said in a statement.

Beirut and southern Lebanon in particular have suffered punishing raids by the Israeli air force following the capture of two Israeli soldiers by Lebanon's Hezbollah Shiite militia, who have also fired rockets at Israeli towns.

Villepin was meeting Monday with Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy and Defence Minister Michele Alliot-Marie before heading to Beirut and returning later in the day.

He is the first foreign head of government to visit Beirut since the crisis broke last week.

And Foreign Office minister Kim Howells confirmed: "If these numbers have to be evacuated, it becomes the biggest evacuation since Dunkirk."

As Israeli bombs and missiles continued to pulverise Lebanon, Howells said British officials were working day and night on plans to get our citizens out by sea.

The aircraft carrier HMS Illustrious and assault ship HMS Bulwark are due to arrive in the conflict zone tomorrow. The destroyers York and Gloucester are already in position.

Military experts are preparing the ground for a mass evacuation.

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The team will have to make sure the port in Beirut is safe to use. It was bombed by Israel yesterday and large parts were left in flames.

Howells said: "The priority has to be the safety of those we are trying to evacuate.

"It is no good bringing people out from comparative safety and putting them into very dangerous positions in the hope of bringing them out.

"We are advising British nationals to stay put, exercise caution and keep in touch with the embassy."

Howells said 3500 British families in Lebanon were registered with the Foreign Office when the conflict began last Wednesday.

He added: "Since then, we have registered an additional 2000 individuals, bringing the total to about 12,000 British nationals."

Howells said there were 10,000 dual nationals in Lebanon and Britain was responsible for citizens of some Commonwealth states.

He said: "The figures become very large when we take those numbers into account."

Among those waiting for rescue are Glasgow couple Elie and Jacqui Kadi and their children Lauren, nine, and Joe, seven. They were with family in Beirut when the violence began.

Like thousands of others, the Kadis have fled to the countryside.

Jacqui said: "We're waiting to be told we are being evacuated but each hour is so slow.It's unbelievable."

Lauren said: "I am so scared that a bomb is going to kill us. I want to go home to see my friends.

"But I am scared a bomb will hit my cousins and I'll never see them again."

Joe sobbed: "I just want to go home. I don't like the noise of the planes and bombs. Please let us go home today."

About 40 of the most vulnerable Brits - including pensioners and families with very young children - have already been airlifted to Cyprus.

The group left on a helicopter carrying European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana, who was on a fact-finding mission in Beirut.

Another aircraft was due to leave last night, with more organised.

British ambassador to Lebanon JamesWatt said: "We're trying to put people into categories of high and low priority - those who are really anxious to move and those who are happy to sit it out for a while."

As Brits waited, foreign nationals were already preparing to leave.

America was planning to start taking its 25,000 trapped citizens to safety by ship last night. The government chartered a merchant vessel which can carry 750 passengers.

France began gathering its people for evacuation on a hired Greek ferry.

Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Ukraine are bussing their nationals to Syria, braving air raids by Israel on the main road from Beirut to Damascus.

While foreigners fled, the people of Lebanon continued to suffer.

Hundreds of thousands have been driven from their homes, and thousands are sleeping in the open.

Lebanon's economy was just starting to prosper again after long years of civil war and domination by Syria.

Many people fear the violence will plunge the country into recession, as well as speeding up the alarming growth in global oil prices.

Officials in Lebanon say about 200 people, mostly civilians, have been killed since Israel began its attacks last Wednesday. Israel has lost 24 people, half of them civilians.

Israel sent in the bombers after the Hezbollah terror group kidnapped two of its soldiers and killed eight others in a border raid.

Lebanon has endured hundreds of air strikes since as the Israelis try to shatter Hezbollah's grip on the south.

Roads and bridges have been blitzed, Beirut airport has been repeatedly hit and the homes and offices of Hezbollah officials have been targeted.

Fifteen people, nine of them Lebanese soldiers, were killed in the northern city of Tripoli yesterday when Israel bombed coastal radar stations it claims had been used by Hezbollah.

Eleven people died in strikes in the east of the country apparently aimed at Hezbollah leaders.

And seven more were killed in raids south of Beirut. Air strikes at Beirut harbour killed two people. Other attacks set fire to a gas storage tank in Dawra in northern Beirut and a fuel tank at the airport.

A small force of Israeli ground troops crossed into Lebanon to attack Hezbollah positions, then withdrew.

The Israelis want the release of their kidnapped soldiers and are demanding that Hezbollah pull back from the border so they cannot fire rockets into northern Israel.

Hezbollah have launched hundreds of rockets in the last six days. Eight railway workers died on Sunday in a rocket attack on the city of Haifa.

Haifa was hit again yesterday as scores more rockets fell. One blast destroyed a three-storey block of flats.

Israeli officials say rockets are reaching further and further into their country. They claim Hezbollah's allies, Iran and Syria, have sent them missiles powerful enough to hit Tel Aviv.

After talks at the G8 summit of the world's richest nations in Russia, Tony Blair and United Nations secretarygeneral Kofi Annan suggested that an international peacekeeping force could be sent to southern Lebanon.

Blair said it was "the only way" to stop the fighting.

Israel reacted coolly to the plan. A government spokeswoman said: "We want to be sure Hezbollah is not deployed at our northern border."

The Israelis want to see Lebanese government forces take the south of the country back from Hezbollah. But Beirut fears it would spark a civil war.

Hezbollah dismissed international ceasefire proposals.

The party's Hussein Haj Hassan said: "The international envoys have conveyed Israeli conditions. These conditions are rejected. We accept what secures our country's interest and pride and dignity - not to submit to Israeli conditions."

On the Al-Manar TV channel, Hezbollah said they wanted an unconditional ceasefire, adding: "This is the beginning. Beware of our cyclone."

Untrue, of course. It is the Lebanese - and their 140 dead, almost all civilians - who are also on the front line. In Israel, 24 have been killed, 15 of them civilians. So the exchange rate for death in this filthy war is now approximately one Israeli to five Lebanese. So many Lebanese have now fled Beirut for Tripoli in the north of Lebanon, or for the Bekaa Valley in the east - or to Syria - that Beirut, where one and a half million people live, is a ghost city, its remaining residents sitting in their homes amid the hopelessness of all those who believed that this country was at last emerging from the shadows of its 15-year civil war. It was Nasrallah who said that there are "more surprises to come", and the Lebanese fear that the Israelis, too, have some more surprises for them.

I watched one of these from my sea-front balcony at dusk on Saturday, an American-made Apache helicopter turning three times over the Mediterranean before firing a single missile - perfectly visible, with smoke pouring from the tail - that smacked into Beirut's brand new lighthouse on the Corniche in a cloud of brown muck. So what was this for? Another "terrorist" target, I suppose. Like the gas stations bombed in the Bekaa Valley. Like the convoy of 20 civilians incinerated in an Israeli air-raid on Saturday after being ordered - by the Israelis themselves - to leave their home village on the border.

Last night, Hizbollah's missiles - after killing 10 Israelis in Haifa - were falling on the occupied Syrian Golan Heights, setting the forests alight, and on the Israeli city of Acre. The Syrians warned of an "unlimited" response if Israel attacked them - the Israelis have been saying, untruthfully, that Syrian troops and Iranians are present in Lebanon, helping Hizbollah in their battle - and the preposterous response of the G8 summit was greeted with despair. Tony Blair, who is now also, it seems, the Minister of Root Causes, believes Syria and Iran are behind the original Hizbollah attack. He is right. But it is to Damascus that the West will have to go to switch this dirty war off.

Certainly, the powerless Lebanese Prime Minister, Fouad Siniora, cannot do so. With his government accused by Israel of responsibility for Wednesday's capture of two Israeli soldiers - a claim as preposterous as it is wrong - he went on television in tears to appeal to the United Nations to arrange a ceasefire for his "disaster-stricken nation". The Lebanese appreciated the tears, but those tears are unlikely to have had President Bush shaking in his boots. Churchill in 1940, Siniora - a sincere and good man, uncorrupted by Lebanese politics - is not. "If our Prime Minister is crying," one Lebanese woman astutely pointed out to me yesterday, " what is the civilian population of our country supposed to do?"

But where are the other supposed political titans of Lebanon? What is Saad Hariri, son of the assassinated ex-prime minister Rafiq Hariri - who rebuilt the Lebanon which Israel is now destroying - doing in Kuwait, chatting to the Kuwaitis about his country's predicament? The Kuwaiti army is scarcely going to come to defend Lebanon. Why isn't Hariri the son on his private jet to the G8 summit in St Petersburg to demand of President Bush that he protect the democratically-elected government and the nation he praised for its "cedar revolution" last year? Or doesn't democracy matter when Israel is smashing Lebanon? Answer: no, it doesn't.

UN Security Council Resolution 1559 demanded a Syrian retreat from Lebanon - which was accomplished - but it also demanded the disarming of Hizbollah, which was definitely not accomplished. Many here suspected that 1559, designed by the French and the Americans, was intended to weaken Lebanon and prepare it for a peace treaty with Israel. Well, not any more. It was the Lebanese President, Emile Lahoud, who still cravenly follows Syria's line - he is, after all, Syria's man - who said yesterday that Lebanon "will never surrender". Lahoud as Churchill. There is something obscene here.

Nasrallah, meanwhile, told the Israelis that: "If you do not want to play by rules, we can do the same." It was a grim little threat that was obviously meant to counter Ehud Olmert's equally grim little threat that there would be "far-reaching consequences" for the missile attack on Haifa. Nasrallah's televised argument - that Hizbollah originally wished to confine all casualties to the military - will not wash with Israel, but may encourage those many Lebanese who were originally outraged by Hizbollah's attack across the border on Wednesday, only to be silenced by the cruelty of Israel's response.

"This is the last struggle of the 'umma'," Nasrallah said, the " umma" being the Arab "homeland". Alas, that is what the Arab leaders said when they joined Lawrence of Arabia's battle against the Ottoman empire in the First World War. It is always the "last struggle" .

The weapons of war

Fajr-3 missile

An Iranian-built rocket with range of 45km which can carry a 45kg warhead. Israel accused Hizbollah of firing 240mm Fajr-3 missiles against Haifa. Iran denies supplying the missiles to Hizbollah

Fajr-5 rocket

Longer-range version of Fajr-3 that can strike targets up to 72km away

Raad missile

Iranian-built missile with range of 120km. Could reach central Israel. Israelis accused Hizbollah of firing Raad ("Thunder") missiles yesterday. Hizbollah said last week it had fired Raad for the first time

Katyusha

Previously the Hizbollah missile of choice, the Russian-designed Katyushas have a range of 22km and variable accuracy. Israel accused Syria of supplying Hizbollah with a longer-range model

Kassem

Rockets with range of up to 10km, used by Hamas guerrillas in Palestinian-ruled Gaza. Israeli town of Sderot has been a frequent target of the notoriously inaccurate missiles

F-16 fighter

The US-made "fighting Falcon" is a multi-role fighter which has been dropping quarter-ton bombs on targets in Lebanon