Nine soldiers were injured in heavy exchanges of fire that took place Monday morning between Israeli ground forces and Hezbollah guerrillas in the area between the village of Maroun al-Ras and the town of Bint Jbeil, Israeli media reported.

A senior Israel Air Force official said that helicopters and warplanes accompanied the forces' movement on the ground and fired at the area before and during the invasion. The air force has also provided the troops on the ground with intelligence.

Two Hezbollah fighters were captured by Israeli troops on Sunday night in the village of Maroun al-Ras, which is less than 500 meters north of the Israeli border.

Overall, 270 targets in Lebanon were bombarded in the last 24 hours, among them more than 35 suspicious vehicles which aided in shooting rockets at Israel, more than 50 buildings and headquarters used as cover for militants and weaponry, media networks used by the Hezbollah, a bridge, and areas for launching rockets.

On July 12, Israel launched a massive offensive in Lebanon in retaliation for the capture of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah guerillas in a cross-border attack which also killed eight others.

Hezbollah has fired hundreds of rockets into northern Israel since the violence broke out while Israeli jets and artillery have responded with massive bombardments on targets across Lebanon.

More than 300 Lebanese and 37 Israelis have been killed in firefights between the two sides, while tens of thousands of foreign nationals have been fleeing Lebanon.

Israel believes that as a small country in a near constant state of conflict, having a say over what information gets out to the world is vital to its security. Critics say the policy is a slippery slope not fit for a democracy.

The range of issues subject to censorship in the latest conflict with Lebanese guerrillas are all related to the goal of preventing Hezbollah from using the media to help it better aim rockets at Israel.

The Associated Press has agreed, like other organizations, to abide by the rules of the censor, which is a condition for receiving permission to operate as a media organization in Israel.

Reporters are expected to censor themselves and not report any of the forbidden material. This story was not submitted to a censor. When in doubt, they can submit a story to the censor who will hand it back, possibly with deletions. The AP will note in a story if any deletions have been made. If a reporter violates the rules, he or she suffers the consequences.

The rules include no real-time reports giving the exact locations of guerrilla missile hits; no reports of missile hits - or misses - on strategic targets; and no reports telling when citizens are allowed to leave their bunkers for supplies.

Journalists are also not allowed to give details about senior Israeli officials going to the north, where Hezbollah's rockets are falling, until the officials have left the area. They also cannot report places where there aren't enough shelters or where public defense is weak.

So far in this conflict, about one rocket in 100 fired by Hezbollah has killed an Israeli. The rest usually explode in empty fields, tear concrete from abandoned streets or plunk into the Mediterranean. Fired blind, Hezbollah's thousands of mostly short-range, inaccurate munitions simply pose a random peril to Israeli citizens.

For obvious reasons, Israel would like to keep it that way. But live media feedback, the censor says, changes everything.

If a news outlet reports immediately that a missile splashed into the sea, for example, any guerrilla with an Internet connection knows to aim left. Report that an oil refinery in Haifa went up in flames, and Hezbollah will surely celebrate and reload. Report that a senior official is headed north, and rockets will be raining down in no time.

Or so goes the logic of censorship.

But in an era when mobile phones have cameras and the terrorists' weapons include laptops and video crews, even the chief censor acknowledges that a complete blockade of news is in many cases not possible.

"Not in 2006,'' she says.

Restrictions on the media are not unique to Israel. The United States military makes journalists embedded with troops in Iraq sign a document agreeing not to report specifics of troop movements and attacks in real time, for reasons similar to Israel's.

Critics say the censorship system is worse than ineffective - it's undemocratic, often counterproductive and a violation of freedom of speech.

"People are entitled to get as much information as they can about what's happening in a conflict,'' says Rohan Jahasekera, associate editor of the London-based magazine, the Index of Censorship.

Israel's censorship rules are not unusual, he adds, but "it's unusual in that they're enforced.''

Jahasekera also disputed arguments that reporting missile landings helped Hezbollah, since the rockets the Islamic militants use are "spectacularly inaccurate.''

Bob Steele, Nelson Scholar for Journalism Values at the Poynter Institute, a media studies organization, says editors should bear the responsibility for decisions to publish or not.

"These are decisions that the news organizations and journalists should make with the input of government and military officials,'' he said. "They should not be decisions that are made by default.''

"We should always push back on censorship,'' Steele adds, even if it's a losing fight.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Friday that she would head to Israel on Sunday at the beginning of a round of Middle Eastern diplomacy. The original plan was to include a stop to Cairo, Egypt, in her travels, but she did not announce any stops in Arab capitals.

Instead, the meeting of Arab and European envoys planned for Cairo will take place in Italy, Western diplomats said. While Arab governments initially criticized Hezbollah for starting the fight with Israel in Lebanon, discontent is rising in Arab countries over the number of civilian casualties in Lebanon, and the governments have become wary of playing host to Rice until a cease-fire package is put together.

To hold the meetings in an Arab capital before a diplomatic solution is reached, said Martin S. Indyk, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel, ''would have identified the Arabs as the primary partner of the United States in this project at a time where Hezbollah is accusing the Arab leaders of providing cover for the continuation of Israel's military operation.'' The decision to stay away from Arab countries for now is a markedly different strategy than the shuttle diplomacy that previous administrations used to mediate in the Middle East.

''I have no interest in diplomacy for the sake of returning Lebanon and Israel to the status quo ante,'' Rice said Friday. ''I could have gotten on a plane and rushed over and started shuttling around, and it wouldn't have been clear what I was shuttling to do.''

Before Rice heads to Israel on Sunday, she will join President Bush at the White House for discussions on the Middle East crisis with two Saudi envoys, Saud al-Faisal, the foreign minister, and Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the secretary general of the National Security Council.

The new American arms shipment to Israel has not been announced publicly, and the officials who described the administration's decision to rush the munitions to Israel would discuss it only after being promised anonymity. The officials included employees of two government agencies, and one described the shipment as just one example of a broad array of armaments that the United States has long provided Israel.

One American official said the shipment should not be compared to the kind of an ''emergency resupply'' of dwindling Israeli stockpiles that was provided during the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, when an American military airlift helped Israel recover from early Arab victories.

David Siegel, a spokesman for the Israeli Embassy in Washington, said: ''We have been using precision-guided munitions in order to neutralize the military capabilities of Hezbollah and to minimize harm to civilians. As a rule, however, we do not comment on Israel's defense acquisitions.''

Israel's need for precision munitions is driven in part by its strategy in Lebanon, which includes destroying hardened underground bunkers where Hezbollah leaders are said to have taken refuge as well as missile sites and other targets that would be hard to hit without laser and satellite-guided bombs.

Pentagon and military officials declined to describe in detail the size and contents of the shipment to Israel, and they would not say whether the munitions were being shipped by cargo aircraft or some other means. But an arms-sale package approved last year provides authority for Israel to purchase from the United States as many as 100 GBU-28s, which are 5,000-pound laser-guided bombs intended to destroy concrete bunkers. The package also provides for selling satellite-guided munitions.

An announcement in 2005 that Israel was eligible to buy the ''bunker buster'' weapons described the GBU-28 as ''a special weapon that was developed for penetrating hardened command centers located deep underground.'' The document added, ''The Israeli Air Force will use these GBU-28s on their F-15 aircraft.''

American officials said that once a weapons purchase is approved, it is up to the buyer nation to set up a timetable. But one American official said normal procedures usually do not include rushing deliveries within days of a request. That was done because Israel is a close ally in the midst of hostilities, the official said.

Although Israel had some precision-guided bombs in its stockpile when the campaign in Lebanon began, the Israelis may not have taken delivery of all the weapons they were entitled to under the 2005 sale. Israel said its air force had dropped 23 tons of explosives Wednesday night alone in Beirut.

A senior Israeli official said Friday the attacks to date had degraded Hezbollah's military strength by roughly half, but the campaign could go on for two more weeks or longer.

''We will stay heavily with the air campaign,'' he said. ''There's no time limit. We will end when we achieve our goals.''

The Bush administration announced Thursday a military equipment sale to Saudi Arabia, worth more than $6 billion, a move that may in part have been aimed at deflecting inevitable Arab government anger at the decision to supply Israel with munitions in the event that effort became public.

On Friday, Bush administration officials laid out their plans for the diplomatic strategy that Rice will pursue. In Rome, the United States will try to hammer out a diplomatic package that will offer Lebanon incentives under the condition that a U.N. resolution, which calls for the disarming of Hezbollah, is implemented.

Diplomats will also try to figure out the details around an eventual international peacekeeping force, and which countries will contribute to it. Germany and Russia have both indicated that they would be willing to contribute forces; Rice said the United States was unlikely to.

Implicit in the eventual diplomatic package is a cease-fire. But a senior American official said it remained unclear whether, under such a plan, Hezbollah would be asked to retreat from southern Lebanon and commit to a cease-fire, or whether American diplomats might depend on Israel's continued bombardment to make Hezbollah's acquiescence irrelevant.

Daniel Ayalon, Israel's ambassador to Washington, said that Israel would not rule out an international force to police the borders of Lebanon and Syria and to patrol southern Lebanon, where Hezbollah has had a stronghold. But he said that Israel was first determined to take out Hezbollah's command and control centers and weapons stockpiles.

This might be true. Earlier in the day, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told a cabinet meeting that the current Lebanon crisis would last for a long time.

Olmert said that the Israeli army would not be restrained in its operations against Hezbollah guerillas, Israel's best-selling newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth reported.

Violence between Israel and Hezbollah erupted on July 12 whenHezbollah guerillas abducted two Israeli soldiers and killed eight in a cross-border attack.

Israel said that its military response was aimed at removing the group from southern Lebanon.

More than 300 Lebanese and 37 Israelis have been killed in firefights between the two sides, while tens of thousands of foreign nationals have been fleeing Lebanon.

"Israel was sending clear messages to both Syria and Iran by doing so," Abdul Kader said, adding that Hezbollah was believed to be supported by Syria and Iran.

He said that U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who will start her crisis mission in the Middle East soon, was speaking about a new map for the region.

"But, I have to say that the American version of the Middle East is one that is full of chaos and destruction. Just look at what is going on in Iraq," said Abdul Kader.

Ahmed Hany Hassnein, a senior editor and Mideast affairs expert based in Cairo, said that the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hezbollah has opened a new chapter in Middle East affairs.

"Some of old strategies have become obsolete and new elements have emerged in an international formula," he wrote in an article carried by the Egyptian Gazette on Friday.

The most important new element was the breaking of Israel'sstrategic security taboo -- not attacked at home, he said. Since the outbreak of the conflict, Hezbollah has fired hundreds of rockets into northern Israel. Haifa, Israel's third largest city, has also come under attack, with several residents killed.

Hassnein said that such a conflict was tantamount to are distribution of the pack before a new deal that will change the region forever.

Israel would have to change its policies based on a new security and strategic reality after the conflict was over, he said.

He said that Iran has a role to play in the conflict in Lebanon since it maintained close relations with Syria and Hezbollah, adding that Iran would play such a card in negotiations with Western powers on its nuclear program.

"Syria also needs a new formula to have a greater role after its army withdrew from Lebanon," said Hassnein.

However, Mamdouh Qenawi, political analyst and chief of the Constitutional Social Liberal Party, had an eye on what would happen inside Lebanon after the conflict.

"After the guns fall silent, the Lebanese would start to bring Hezbollah leaders to account," Qenawi said, adding that Hezbollah leaders would be held responsible for destruction of infrastructure and death of many Lebanese.

To Qenawi's mind, the idea of some Lebanese blaming Hezbollah meant that there might be a sectarian strife in Lebanon.

"Whether Lebanon would remain a unified country after this big argument is a question," Qenawi said.

"At the same time, if the conflict (between Israel and Hezbollah) means something to the Palestinians, it means that the creaking railway carriage of peace has already derailed and there is no way to put it back on track," he said.

She was speaking on Saturday after meeting with members of a United Nations team that had just returned from the region.

More than 300 Lebanese civilians have been killed in 11 days of Israeli air and artillery strikes against Hezbollah, the armed Lebanese Shia group.

The present round of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah broke out after Hezbollah kidnapped two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid on July 12.

Rice will travel to the Middle East some time next week. Her itinerary has not yet been announced.

Call for negotiations

Hezbollah has offered to release the two soldiers if Israel frees Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.

But Israel has said that Hezbollah must release the soldiers unconditionally and says that it will not halt its offensive until Lebanon implements UN resolution 1559 and disarms Hezbollah.

Since then the Israeli aircraft have carried out more than 3,000 sorties in Lebanon and have bombed infrastructure including bridges, roads and ports.

By Saturday morning the attacks had killed at least 305 Lebanese civilians and at least 12 members of the Lebanese army, which has tried to stay out of the conflict.

Israeli military leaders say that the attacks are necessary to stop Hezbollah firing rockets at Israel.

Since fighting started 11 days ago, Hezbollah has fired more than 1,000 rockets at Israel, killing 15 civilians.

"Many rocket launchers have been destroyed, terror infrastructures have been destroyed and also nearly 100 Hezbollah terrorists have been killed, from all levels and all ranks," Dan Halutz, the Israeli army's chief of staff, said on Friday.

"Fighting against Hezbollah is taking a heavy toll on [the group].

"The fact is that they avoid publishing the number of their losses, the names of their men that were killed, and the fact that they feed the press dishonest information [shows] they are disconnected from reality."

Limited operations

The Israeli military has also announced that for the last three days its troops have held positions inside Lebanon near the villages of Marwaheen in the west and in Maroun al-Ras further east.

"At most, we're talking about a few kilometers in," an Israeli army spokesman said.

"It will probably widen, but we are still looking at limited operations. We're not talking about massive forces going inside at this point."

On Friday, the Israeli army called up 3,000 reserve soldiers and began massing troops and armoured vehicles near the Lebanese border.

An Israeli spokesman, Captain Yaacov Dalal, said ground operations were "indispensable because the air force can not always destroy underground bunkers dug by Hezbollah, which has put in place an entire fortified network".

New air strikes

The Israeli army also said it attacked more than 150 targets across Lebanon in the last 24 hours, including a Hezbollah weapons bunker, command posts and 11 rocket launchers.

An Aljazeera television correspondent in Lebanon reported that overnight Israeli airstrikes had hit residential areas in the southern town of Nabatiya, killing one person and wounding eight others.

Other air strikes had hit the town centre of Al-Khaim, damaging many houses on Saturday morning, she said.

In northern Israel two people were wounded when 10 Hezbollah rockets landed in and around the town of Carmiel. Other rockets hit the towns of Nahariya and Rosh Pina, closer to the Lebanese border, medics said.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was also heading to the Middle East with Washington increasingly estranged from European and Arab allies over a conflict that has killed close to 400 people in just 12 days and triggered a major humanitarian crisis.

UN humanitarian coordinator Jan Egeland, in Beirut to launch a urgent appeal for funds for half a million people made homeless by the conflict, made no attempt to hide his fury as he toured bombed-out areas.

"This is destruction of block after block of mainly residential areas. I would say it seems to be an excessive use of force in an area with so many citizens," he told reporters in the southern suburbs of Beirut, a Hezbollah stronghold.

Asked if the Israeli raid that destroyed the burned-out buildings before him constituted a war crime, he replied: "It makes it a violation of humanitarian law."

His comments came as at least twelve civilians, including a Lebanese press photographer, were killed in new Israeli air strikes across Lebanon on the 12th day of Israel's punishing war on Hezbollah.

The Shiite militant group said three of its fighters had also been killed.

Shiite guerrillas responded with a new hail of rocket fire on Israel's third city of Haifa, killing one person in his car and a second as he worked in a warehouse.

Streams of people, many waving white flags, are making a desperate trek from southern Lebanon after Israel ordered them to leave their homes, raising fears it was planning a largescale ground invasion.

Israeli Justice Minister Haim Ramon said the aim of the offensive was to keep Hezbollah -- which controls southern Lebanon in the absence of the regular Lebanese army -- at least 20 kilometres (13 miles) from the frontier.

Israel, which has called up thousands of reserve soldiers and massed its troops on the border, seized control of the strategic hilltop village of Marun Al-Ras on Saturday after sending tanks, bulldozers and armoured cars rolling across the border.

But Defence Minister Amir Peretz insisted Israel did not plan a widescale invasion. "The ground operation is focusing on a limited entry of forces," he told the cabinet. "We are not dealing with an invasion of Lebanon."

At least 362 people have been killed in Israel's massive blitz against Lebanon which was launched after the capture of two soldiers by Hezbollah guerrillas in a deadly border attack on July 12. A total of 37 Israelis have died.

Israel's ambassador to the United States maintained the military offensive had dealt a "real blow" to Hezbollah, damaging the group's arsenal and killing a "few hundred" of its fighters.

Daniel Ayalon said the military campaign was "not easy" but Israel was making progress, adding: "And in a few days, you will see a totally different situation."

But in the first openly expressed reservations by an Israeli minister on the success of the offensive, minister without portfolio Eitan Cabel said: "I admit I had hoped for better from the army."

Syria, blamed by the United States for stoking the conflict, warned that if Israel invaded Lebanon it would have no choice but to respond.

"If Israel makes a land entry into Lebanon, they can get to within 20 kilometres (12 miles) of Damascus," Information Minister Moshen Bilal told the Spanish newspaper ABC.

"What will we do? Stand by with our arms folded? Absolutely not. Without any doubt Syria will intervene in the conflict."

US ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton rebuffed a previous Syrian offer of dialogue in characteristically blunt fashion, saying that "Syria doesn't need dialogue to know what they need to do."

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, whose army is also fighting a second deadly offensive in the Gaza Strip, said he would accept a peacekeeping force in Lebanon "made up of troops from European Union countries".

Its mandate "will have to include control of the border crossings between Syria and Lebanon, deployment in south Lebanon and support for the Lebanese army," he said.

His comments came amid mounting international criticism of the Israeli offensive, which has left Lebanon virtually cut off from the world, made hundreds of thousands refugees in their own country and destroyed billions of dollars of infrastructure.

Even a minister from close US ally Britain, which had drawn Arab anger for appearing to back US support of the bombardment, has described Israel's tactics as "very difficult to understand".

In Washington, Saudi Arabia's Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal requested an immediate ceasefire in talks with US
President George W. Bush and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Saudi officials said he would also propose an "exchange of prisoners" between Hezbollah and Israel, something the Israeli government has so far ruled out without the prior release of two soldiers captured by the Shiite militant group in a deadly cross-border raid on July 12.

Rice was due to arrive in Israel on Monday to meet Olmert in the hope of finding a long-term solution to the crisis rather than a temporary ceasefire, an outcome vehemently opposed by Washington as a "false promise".

Israel said it opened an 80-kilometre by eight-kilometre (50-mile by five-mile) safe passage to Beirut for ships and aircraft, a humanitarian corridor to allow aid to the Lebanese.

Israel's air and sea blockade put Lebanon's only international airport out of action, and the bombing of houses, roads, bridges, factories, warehouses and trucks has created scenes reminiscent of the 1975-1990 civil war.

Foreign governments have been forced to lay on a flotilla of ferries, warships and cruise liners to evacuate stranded nationals, mainly to the nearby resort island of Cyprus which has been battling to find temporary accommodation and flights for the estimated 70,000 evacuees at peak summer holiday season.

The decline in Sharon's condition came as
Israel battles Hezbollah militants in south Lebanon.

He was moved from a Jerusalem hospital in May to the Tel Hashomer hospital for long-term treatment.

The 78-year-old, who left public life as one of Israel's most popular premiers, suffered a massive brain haemorrhage in early January after which he fell into a coma from which he has not emerged.

The stroke signalled a dramatic end to the career of the former general who was on course at the time for re-election as the head of the newly-created Kadima party.

He was succeeded on a temporary basis by his close ally Ehud Olmert who subsequently led the Kadima party to a less than convincing victory in a March general election.

Sharon called the election in November on the same day that he quit his long-time political home in the right-wing Likud party, fed up with battling hardliners who refused to forgive him for unilaterally pulling out of Gaza.

He had garnered a reputation as an arch-hawk before he assumed the premiership in early 2001, before which he had held a several cabinet positions.

At one stage, an official Israeli commission declared him unfit for public office over his role in a massacre of Palestinians in two Beirut refugee camps that was carried out by Christian militiamen during Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon.

He was also largely blamed for sparking the second Palestinian uprising with a visit to Jerusalem's disputed Al-Aqsa mosque compound in September 2000.

But he managed to rewrite his reputation in international circles as a key to peace in the Middle East by ordering the first ever evacuation of Jews from occupied Palestinian territory last August.

Sharon's disengagement from Gaza had been expected to allow Olmert to pull tens of thousands of Jewish settlers out of the
West Bank. But those plans are on hold as Israel grapples with its crisis on the Lebanese border.

"It's a new idea, we'll certainly take it seriously," John R. Bolton, the American ambassador to the United Nations, said on the CNN program "Late Edition."

The German foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, and the French foreign minister, Philippe Douste-Blazy, were both in Israel on Sunday. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who along with President Bush met with senior Saudi officials on Sunday, is due to arrive on Monday. Ms. Rice is expected to go to Rome later in the week for a conference aimed at ending the fighting.

While the Israelis and Americans seemed increasingly focused on a multinational force for southern Lebanon that would work with the Lebanese Army to remove the risk to Israel of Hezbollah, it remained unclear how the European countries whose forces would participate would react or how Arab countries viewed the idea.

Moreover, in Lebanon the talk was of exchanging the two Israeli soldiers captured by Hezbollah for prisoners in Israel, while the Israelis clearly want a more comprehensive deal that will end the risk that Hezbollah poses on their border.

Mr. Peretz reiterated Sunday that the offensive was not the start of a full-scale invasion of Lebanon and that Israel's activity will remain restricted to well-defined raids. He said the military operations would complement "broad international activity to complete the process" of subduing Hezbollah and restoring security along its northern border.

Israeli planes continued to blast southern Lebanese cities, killing at least eight civilians, including a Lebanese photographer, and wounding at least 45, Lebanese officials said.

The violence struck a number of civilian vehicles. A minibus carrying 16 people fleeing the village of Tairi, was hit by a missile, a Lebanese security official said. Three were killed, and 13 were wounded, the official said.

A Lebanese freelance photographer, Layal Najib, 23, was killed when an Israeli missile struck next to her car on the road between the villages of Qana and Siddiqine. Ms. Najib worked at Al Jaras magazine and was also a freelance for Agence France-Presse and several other news outlets.

Asked about the attacks on civilian vehicles, an Israeli Army spokesman said the military had hit "approximately 20 vehicles suspected of serving the terror organization in the launching of missiles at Israel and were recognized fleeing from or staying at missile-launching areas."

The deaths brought the toll to at least 380, Lebanese authorities said. Lebanon does not differentiate between civilian deaths and the deaths of Hezbollah fighters. The Israeli military says it has killed more than 100 Hezbollah fighters.

The military also said that Hezbollah had fired nearly 100 rockets on northern Israel on Sunday, showing no slackening of the pace in recent days.

Two people were killed when at least 13 rockets fell on Haifa, the country's third-largest city, bringing Israel's civilian death toll in the 12-day-old conflict to 17. Israel has lost 19 soldiers in the fighting.

Israel has not said how many ground troops it now has in Lebanon but the Israeli news media reported Sunday that the number was now in the thousands.

In Beirut, a senior Lebanese official gave the first word since the fighting began of the Israeli soldiers whose capture set off the crisis on July 12. Lebanon's foreign minister, Fawsi Sallukh, a Shiite who is close to Hezbollah, said the two soldiers were "in good health," and called on the United Nations to have a third party arrange for a prisoner exchange.

He did not say whether he had actually seen the seized soldiers.

The government has distanced itself from Hezbollah's actions but has not been overtly critical of the powerful militia group.

In a telephone interview with CNN, the Lebanese prime minister, Fouad Siniora, sharply criticized Israeli attacks.

"Israel is committing serious crimes against humanity," he said. "They are fragmenting the country piece by piece."

The United Nations' top humanitarian official, Jan Egeland, toured the destruction in Beirut and said that it would take billions of dollars to repair damage.

He was expected to travel later to Israel to help coordinate the delivery of humanitarian aid. As many as 600,000 people have been displaced by the fighting, according to the World Health Organization.

The Israeli military announced that humanitarian aid could enter Lebanon through Beirut's port and from there be transferred to regional aid centers across Lebanon, in coordination with its forces. It did not specify how aid would reach the south where the fighting has been the heaviest and the aid is most needed.

Cyprus continued funneling thousands of foreign evacuees from Lebanon to safety in their home countries on Sunday, welcoming an estimated 6,000 people at its two main ports in Larnaca and Limassol, according to government officials.

By the end of the day, many of the evacuees had left the island on charter flights arranged by their governments, mostly through the airport at Larnaca, which is operating well beyond its normal capacity with about 250 arrivals and departures a day, according to airport officials.

Nabih Berri, the speaker of Lebanon's parliament, a Shiite and head of the rival Amal movement, said Hezbollah had agreed to allow the Lebanese government to lead any negotiations toward an exchange.

"This has been accepted by Hezbollah," Mr. Berri said.

So far, however, Israel has rejected such an exchange, saying the problem of Hezbollah is much larger and needs to be solved.

Brig. Gen. Shuki Shachar, chief of staff of the Israeli Army's Northern Command, said some ground forces had reached "the depths" of Lebanon while at least three Lebanese villages were now under Israeli control.

Tens of thousands of Lebanese fled north to the Lebanese port of Sidon, which Israel attacked for the first time in the current conflict on Sunday. Four people were wounded in the attack, which targeted a Hezbollah-related religious center.

Israeli warplanes and helicopters also attacked Hezbollah positions in and around the eastern Bekaa Valley town of Baalbek and bombed a textile factory in the border town of al-Manara.

General Shacher said the Lebanese civilian death toll was light, considering that Israeli fighter aircraft and attack helicopters have made 1,500 sorties over Lebanon and that Israel has fired more than 20,000 artillery rounds into the country in the last 12 days.

"This is a war and in war sometimes there are mistakes," the general said, noting that it is particularly difficult to avoid civilian casualties when fighting a guerrilla force mixed in an indigenous population.

Israel has been warning the civilian population of the south to move north in order to avoid getting hurt . "The reason for the evacuation of the population is to leave us open space and an open area to hit military and terrorist targets and not to deal with the problem of civilians," General Shachar said.

Israeli military officials say that they have found thousands of Katyusha rockets and other missiles hidden in well-camouflaged underground bunkers and also in mosques, hospitals and schools. They say Iran is trying to send fresh supplies of ammunition and rockets to Lebanon through Syria.

The general said Israeli troops in Maroun al-Ras are now fighting Hezbollah forces in the larger town of Bint Jbeil, a mile or two deeper into the country.

Hezbollah confirmed on Sunday that Israeli forces had occupied Maroun al-Ras and said three of its fighters had been killed in fighting there. But it said in a statement that it had, in turn, inflicted losses on Israeli forces.

"Our steadfast mujahedeen have presented through the Maroun al-Ras confrontations and the losses of the enemy - in troops, tanks and helicopters - an example of what the confrontations will be in every town, village and position," the statement said.

An Italian soldier, Capt. Roberto Punzo, working with the United Nations observer team in southern Lebanon, was wounded by Hezbollah gunfire during the fighting. He was evacuated by helicopter to a hospital in Haifa.

Meanwhile, Hezbollah rockets continued to fall close to the border. The town of Kiryat Shmona was engulfed in dense white smoke by brush fires started by rockets, most of which fall in forests and fields of this sparsely populated area.

Yellow crop-dusters circled overhead dropping red fire suppressant.

In the Gaza Strip, Palestinian militants fired a dozen smaller Qassam rockets into southern Israel on Sunday without causing serious damage. The attacks suggested that earlier reports of a Palestinian Authority attempt to broker a unilateral cease-fire among the militants had failed.

John Bolton, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, scorned Syria's proposal.

"Syria doesn't need dialogue to know what it needs to do. They need to lean on Hezbollah to get them to release the two captured Israeli soldiers and stop the launch of rockets against innocent Israeli civilians," he said.

Al-Meqdad called for international powers to broker a ceasefire in the context of a broader Middle East peace initiative. He also said they should address the demands that Hezbollah made after it triggered the conflict by crossing into Israel to raid an army outpost on July 12, killing eight Israeli soldiers and capturing two others.

Syrian Information Minister Mohsen Bilal echoed the sentiments, saying Syria would only support a peace package that included the return of the Golan Heights, captured by Israel in 1967. "Syria is working on achieving real, comprehensive, fair peace based on the withdrawal from all the occupied territories, including Golan," Bilal told the Spanish newspaper ABC in an interview.

The militants have said they would release the soldiers if Israel released Hezbollah militants being held in its jails.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was to embark on Sunday on a diplomatic mission in a bid to end fighting in the Middle East. She was also expected at an emergency meeting in Rome on Wednesday that will bring together Israel, Lebanon, the European Union, the United Nations and others interested in Middle East peace.

Syria - which has been one of Hezbollah's key backers, along with Iran - was not invited to the Rome meeting.

Isolate Israel, Iranian president urges

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmandinejad said Sunday that Israel had "pushed the button of its own destruction" by attacking Hezbollah guerillas in Lebanon.

"Arrogant powers have set up a base for themselves to threaten and plunder nations in the region," Ahmadinejad told a gathering of education officials in Tehran.

"But today, the occupier regime [Israel] - whose philosophy is based on threats, massacre and invasion - has reached its finishing line."

Ahmadinejad said Islamic nations and others should isolate Israel and its backers. He called on Israel and its allies to apologize.

Iran won't join battle: top Iranian general

A day earlier, the chairman of the joint chiefs of Iran's armed forces, Maj.-Gen. Sayyed Hassan Firuzabadi, said Iran would not join the fighting in the Middle East.

After Hezbollah's initial cross-border raid, Israel began pounding Lebanon with air strikes, including attacks Sunday on Beirut, Sidon and Tyre.

The conflict escalated on Saturday when Israel sent troops, tanks and bulldozers into southern Lebanon, but Israeli Defence Minister Amir Peretz has insisted that his country has no intention of re-occupying the territory that it left in 2000.

Hezbollah militants continued to launch volleys of rockets into northern Israel on Sunday, killing at least two people in one of the attacks on the city of Haifa.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is to arrive in the Middle East on Monday to discuss the deployment of peacekeeping troops in Lebanon and the humanitarian aids, Bolten said in an interview with the National Broadcasting Corporation (NBC).

He reiterated that the cessation of hostilities has to address the root causes of the conflict -- Hezbollah and its allies.

John Bolton, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, said that the United States will seriously consider Israel's proposal to deploy a NATO-led peacekeeping force on Lebanon-Israel border.

On July 17, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan appealed that the international community should consider the deployment of a peacekeeping force in Southern Lebanon.

More than 360 people, mostly civilians, have been killed in Israel's attacks against Lebanon since July 12. Israel has reported 36 casualties resulted from the conflict.

In an interview from the Nof Ginnosar Hotel near Tiberias on Saturday, the Prime Minister of the Peace Government of Israel and Yogic Flyer Alex Kutai called on the elected Israeli government to recruit a group of 265 Yogic Flyers who, through an advanced technique of Transcendental Meditation (TM), he asserted, would create a shield of invincibility around Israel and bring about an immediate cessation of violence with the Hizbullah.

Prime Minister Kutai, who is also the Chairman of the International Transcendental Meditation Society in Israel, said his elected counterpart Ehud Olmert had to urgently find a group of 265 people trained in the TM technique and maintain them in one location where they can generate an invincibility shield around Israel against all forms of war and violence, including road accidents, and keep the shield up permanently.

"Ten days before this latest round of violence broke out between Israel and the Hizbullah, we received an urgent message from the headquarters of the Global Government of World Peace that there was an immediate danger of violence in the region, and that each country had to mobilize its Yogic Flyers - those who practice the TM technique - to ward off the danger," Kutai said earnestly.

According to Kutai, the Yogic Flyer practices an advanced meditation technique in which his or her consciousness is brought to a level where thinking is without content, where the Flyer connects with the "source of all energy and intelligence - beyond any thought and at the same time the source of all thought." Kutai said this state is what physicists call the United Field of the Laws of Nature.

The number 265 should be sufficient, Kutai said, as it conforms exactly to the formula discovered by the overall leader of the Global Government of World Peace, Raja (King) Tony Nader. The formula postulates that the square root of one percent of a country's population is the right number of people needed to tap into a Collective Consciousness strong enough to create a shield of invincibility. Since Israel has an estimated 7 million inhabitants, one per cent is 70,000 and the square root of 70,000 is 264.575.

Kutai said that according to his calculations, 500 Yoga Flyers would be needed to bring peace to the Middle East, but that the Flyers would have to be spread throughout the region. Kutai said he is aware of a similar group of TM practitioners in Lebanon, but that he is not currently in contact with them.

According to "King" Nader's Web site, he is now the First Sovereign Ruler of the Global Country of World Peace. His official title is His Majesty Raja Nader Raam, and his association's physical address is listed as Maharishi Health Education Center P.O. Box 116-5350 Beirut - Lebanon.

The Global Country of World Peace is a country without borders inhabited by citizens who love peace, Kutai said.

According to his Web site, Professor Tony Nader M.D., Ph.D. obtained his MD degree from the American University of Beirut, where he also studied internal medicine and psychiatry. His Ph.D. was in brain and Cognitive Science from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he was also a visiting physician at the Clinical Research Center. He did his post-doctoral work as a Clinical and Research Fellow in Neurology at the Massachusetts General Hospital, the Harvard Medical School.

Nader conducted various research projects on neurochemistry and neuroendocrinology. According to his Web site, he has demonstrated scientifically that human physiology is made up of the 40 aspects of Veda and Vedic Literature, and that all the infinite organizing powers of all kinds and the whole cosmos are seated in the physiology of every human being.

"Therefore every individual - whether Christian or Hindu, Muslim or Buddhist, Sikh or Jain or Parsee - has been scientifically proven to be cosmic, and to have unlimited cosmic potentiality. Higher Intelligence is located in the very physiological structure of every man, woman and child in the nation, and only needs to be awakened for everyone to enjoy the support of Higher Intelligence," the Web site says.

Nader could not be reached for comment, but Kutai said that the "king," who is of Christian Lebanese origin, has gathered a group of 400 European Yogic Flyers to his current headquarters in Holland to keep Europe safe.

Last week, the Israeli branch of the Transcendental Meditation Association had gathered 64 Yogic Flyers at the Hof Ginnosar hotel, but for various reasons only 30 have stayed on this week - far short of the number said by Kutai to be necessary to stop the current round of violence.

Presently, the remaining Israeli Yogic Flyers gather at a large hall in the hotel for two meditation sessions, lasting four hours apiece, every day.

Kutai described the process involved in the Maharishi Technology of Consciousness: "Everybody is seated on foam mattresses, and some of the bodies lift from the air - they hop in the air. What is created in the brain, and EEG research shows this, is a highly coherent brain function. Every person is cosmic and is connected to the unified field. You create coherence inside yourself, and within a group a coherence can be created, and this can spread to a wider area. You can create anything from this level of consciousness, pure consciousness, a level of perfect order. From this level an invincibility can be created in the national consciousness, where no negativity can be created from within, and none can penetrate from the outside."

Kutai said that the elected government of Israel should establish a group of 265 Yogic Flyers and maintain them so that peace could be ensured on a permanent basis. "We have the best army but it cannot prevent the missiles. The government should create this group now. It is much cheaper than bombs. It is cheaper than even one wing of a fighter bomber," Kutai said.

Anybody can become a Yogic Flyer, with the right training, within a few weeks, Kutai said, adding that the current Israeli "squadron" of Flyers includes businesspeople, bankers, teachers, retirees, and hi-tech workers.

Kutai's group are the only guests at the Nof Ginnosar Hotel at this point in time, as Hizbullah rockets have badly dented the entire tourism industry around Lake Kinneret. "We put up a shield around the 30 of us. There is nobody else here. If there were more people our shield would extend even further outward, we could protect more people," the "prime minister" told The Jerusalem Post.

"Of all of Israel's wars since 1948, this was the one for which Israel was most prepared," said Gerald Steinberg, professor of political science at Bar-Ilan University. "In a sense, the preparation began in May 2000, immediately after the Israeli withdrawal, when it became clear the international community was not going to prevent Hezbollah from stockpiling missiles and attacking Israel. By 2004, the military campaign scheduled to last about three weeks that we're seeing now had already been blocked out and, in the last year or two, it's been simulated and rehearsed across the board."

More than a year ago, a senior Israeli army officer began giving PowerPoint presentations, on an off-the-record basis, to U.S. and other diplomats, journalists and think tanks, setting out the plan for the current operation in revealing detail. Under the ground rules of the briefings, the officer could not be identified.

In his talks, the officer described a three-week campaign: The first week concentrated on destroying Hezbollah's heavier long-range missiles, bombing its command-and-control centers, and disrupting transportation and communication arteries. In the second week, the focus shifted to attacks on individual sites of rocket launchers or weapons stores. In the third week, ground forces in large numbers would be introduced, but only in order to knock out targets discovered during reconnaissance missions as the campaign unfolded. There was no plan, according to this scenario, to reoccupy southern Lebanon on a long-term basis.

Israeli officials say their pinpoint commando raids should not be confused with a ground invasion. Nor, they say, do they herald another occupation of southern Lebanon, which Israel maintained from 1982 to 2000 -- in order, it said, to thwart Hezbollah attacks on Israel. Planners anticipated the likelihood of civilian deaths on both sides. Israel says Hezbollah intentionally bases some of its operations in residential areas. And Hezbollah's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, has bragged publicly that the group's arsenal included rockets capable of bombing Haifa, as occurred last week.

Like all plans, the one now unfolding also has been shaped by changing circumstances, said Eran Lerman, a former colonel in Israeli military intelligence who is now director of the Jerusalem office of the American Jewish Committee.

"There are two radical views of how to deal with this challenge, a serious professional debate within the military community over which way to go," said Lerman. "One is the air power school of thought, the other is the land-borne option. They create different dynamics and different timetables. The crucial factor is that the air force concept is very methodical and almost by definition is slower to get results. A ground invasion that sweeps Hezbollah in front of you is quicker, but at a much higher cost in human life and requiring the creation of a presence on the ground."

The advance scenario is now in its second week, and its success or failure is still unfolding. Whether Israel's aerial strikes will be enough to achieve the threefold aim of the campaign -- to remove the Hezbollah military threat; to evict Hezbollah from the border area, allowing the deployment of Lebanese government troops; and to ensure the safe return of the two Israeli soldiers abducted last week -- remains an open question. Israelis are opposed to the thought of reoccupying Lebanon.

"I have the feeling that the end is not clear here. I have no idea how this movie is going to end," said Daniel Ben-Simon, a military analyst for the daily Haaretz newspaper.

Thursday's clashes in southern Lebanon occurred near an outpost abandoned more than six years ago by the retreating Israeli army. The place was identified using satellite photographs of a Hezbollah bunker, but only from the ground was Israel able to discover that it served as the entrance to a previously unknown underground network of caves and bunkers stuffed with missiles aimed at northern Israel, said Israeli army spokesman Miri Regev.

"We knew about the network, but it was fully revealed (Wednesday) by the ground operation of our forces," said Regev. "This is one of the purposes of the pinpoint ground operations -- to locate and try to destroy the terrorist infrastructure from where they can fire at Israeli citizens."

Israeli military officials say as much as 50 percent of Hezbollah's missile capability has been destroyed, mainly by aerial attacks on targets identified from intelligence reports. But missiles continue to be fired at towns and cities across northern Israel.

"We were not surprised that the firing has continued," said Tzachi Hanegbi, chairman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. "Hezbollah separated its leadership command-and-control system from its field organization. It created a network of tiny cells in each village that had no operational mission except to wait for the moment when they should activate the Katyusha rocket launchers hidden in local houses, using coordinates programmed long ago to hit Nahariya or Kiryat Shemona, or the kibbutzim and villages."

"From the start of this operation, we have also been active on the ground across the width of Lebanon," said Brig. Gen. Ron Friedman, head of Northern Command headquarters. "These missions are designed to support our current actions. Unfortunately, one of the many missions which we have carried out in recent days met with slightly fiercer resistance."

Israel didn't need sophisticated intelligence to discover the huge buildup of Iranian weapons supplies to Hezbollah by way of Syria, because Hezbollah's patrons boasted about it openly in the pages of the Arabic press. As recently as June 16, less than four weeks before the Hezbollah border raid that sparked the current crisis, the Syrian defense minister publicly announced the extension of existing agreements allowing the passage of trucks shipping Iranian weapons into Lebanon.

But to destroy them, Israel needed to map the location of each missile.

"We need a lot of patience," said Hanegbi. "The (Israeli Defense Forces) action at the moment is incapable of finding the very last Katyusha, or the last rocket launcher primed for use hidden inside a house in some village."

Moshe Marzuk, a former head of the Lebanon desk for Israeli Military Intelligence who now is a researcher at the Institute for Counter-Terrorism in Herzliya, said Israel had learned from past conflicts in Lebanon, the West Bank and Gaza -- as well as the recent U.S. experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq -- that a traditional military campaign would be countereffective.

"A big invasion is not suitable here," said Marzuk. "We are not fighting an army, but guerrillas. It would be a mistake to enter and expose ourselves to fighters who will hide, fire off a missile and run away. If we are to be on the ground at all, we need to use commandos and special forces."