The warning had an immediate effect. The city's streets virtually emptied yesterday. Most shops were shuttered, and there were few pedestrians on the pavements along the main roads. Only in the alleys of the medieval quarter was there an occasional group of people on chairs outside their front doors.

"I don't have any food for customers," said Abu Ali, a cafe owner. "My wife and children have gone to Beirut. No one's sleeping. They're constantly planning what to do if anything happens". He hinted that if the Israelis entered the town, he would fight them. "I'm a civilian who's ready for anything, day or night," he said. Asked if he had a gun, he repeated his comment.

Standing by his sandwich shop, Houssam Nasser said: "We normally get supplies of bread and meat every day. Now they've stopped. I'll keep my shop open but won't have anything to sell." But he was not planning to leave in spite of the siege.

At the police station, a detective said staff had not been able to move. The government had ordered all police to stay on their jobs, even if they sent their families away, but with the travel ban they could not work properly. "I don't how long this will last. It's the Israelis who decide," he said.

Local and international humanitarian organisations tried to get exemption from the travel ban by applying to the Israeli authorities for permission to go out on urgent missions. Yusuf Khairalla, Tyre's civil defence supervisor, said the city was isolated. "This is the first time this has happened," he said.

His team was denied permission to travel to Maroub, about 10 miles outside the city, to rescue five people from under the rubble of a bombed house.

At the clinic staffed by Médecins sans Frontières Dr Martial Ledecq, a surgeon, was sterilising equipment brought in from Beirut on Monday. The boxes had to be carried along a footbridge across the Litani river by volunteers because Israel destroyed the causeway on Sunday night, cutting Tyre off from road traffic.

"If there is fighting in town, we will be ready for operations. You will have noticed that the main hospitals are all on the eastern edge of town. We are the only one in the centre", Dr Ledecq said.

Jakob Kellenberger, the president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, was forced to walk across the footbridge on a visit to Tyre yesterday. Access for civilians was his major concern, he said, a point he would emphasise during meetings in Israel today.

With southern Lebanon now a virtual prison, the most fortunate people are the region's official prisoners. "We evacuated all 80 of them from Tibnin prison a week ago. They are safe now in Beirut," said a detective at the police station.

Israeli jets hit targets all over Lebanon yesterday and at least four Israeli soldiers were killed in fighting in two incidents near the Lebanese-Israeli border, where Hizbullah fighters remain entrenched.

Israeli soldiers said Hizbullah fighters were using classic guerrilla techniques to evade them and then hit them in the rear with anti-tank weapons. One soldier was killed in Bint Jbeil and three others killed in the coastal village of Labbouna.

Israel continued to shell and bomb the valleys near its border while it moved more armour from the south of Israel to the north. Aircraft bombed a village near Sidon which was burying 15 of its residents that were killed in airstrikes earlier in the week. The missile hit a building a few minutes after the funeral procession had passed causing panic but no injuries to the mourners. Lebanese officials said that 14 people were killed in the attack. Police in Beirut said they discovered a further 14 bodies in buildings bombed on Monday.

A spokeswoman for the Israeli army said its jets had bombed 99 targets in Lebanon yesterday while more than 165 rockets had landed in Israel which caused minor injuries. Many of the Hizbullah rockets landed in open fields creating bush fires all over the north of Israel. Both sides of the border were covered by cloud that merged with the rising smoke.

Two Israeli tanks returning to Israel from Lebanon ran into a minefield yesterday. It was not clear if the mines had been laid by Israel or Hizbullah. One tank was damaged and sappers had to create an escape route for it using explosives.

Casualties

Lebanon yesterday

Hizbullah: 5 killed

Civilians: 25 killed

To date

Hizbullah: 95 killed (IDF claim >400)

Civilians: 998 killed

Israel yesterday

Military: 3 killed

Wounded: 7

To date

Military: 63 killed

Civilians: 35 killed

All figures revised daily and based on Lebanon and Israel government estimates

Hizbullah chief Hassan Nasrallah had apologized to Israeli Arab families at the very beginning of war for the collateral damage caused by the group's rockets, calling the victims "martyrs."

Israeli army has been accused of using Palestinian civilians as human shields in an operation in northern Gaza.

According to the Israeli human rights group, B'tselem, Israeli soldiers seized control of two buildings in the town of Beit Hanun and used six residents, two of them minors, as human shields.

It said they held them on the staircases of the two buildings and at the entrance to rooms, in which the soldiers positioned themselves, for some twelve hours.

During this time, there were intense exchanges of gunfire between the soldiers and Palestinian fighters.

Thicker

The Israeli lawmaker saw the deployment of tanks at the entrances and centers of Arab towns and villages as a sign of continued bias against Israeli Arabs by their government.

"This demonstrates the fact that the blood of Israeli Jews is thicker than that of Israeli Arabs," he fumed.

Zako called on Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Amir Peretz to immediately move these tanks from Arab towns and villages, and halt the Israeli aggressions on the Lebanese people.

Up to 1,000 Lebanese, mostly civilians, have been killed since the start of the war on July 12. A total of 98 Israelis, including 58 servicemen, have also been killed.

Last week, three Arab members of Knesset yelled out insults against Peretz, who was briefing the lawmakers on the war developments.

Among the insults heaped on Peretz was "Angel of Death".

Israeli Arabs, who make up nearly a fifth of the population, are descendants of those who stayed when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were driven from their homes by Zionist gangs in1948, when Israel was founded on the rubble of Palestine.

They accuse the government of failing to build bomb shelters in their towns and villages as it did in other areas.

Relations between Israel's Jews and Arabs have long been difficult, with Arabs complaining of discrimination at work place.

The Knesset has further made life unbearable for Israeli Arabs married to Palestinians by adopting a law denying the latter the right to get an Israeli residency to live with their spouses.

The Israeli High Court of Justice added insult to injury by upholding the controversial law, which has been dismissed by rights groups as racist and discriminatory.

"Regained Dignity"

Despite the fact that Arabs make up a third of the 48 people killed by rocket fire on northern Israel, the sympathies of some Israeli Arabs lie very much with Hizbullah.

"Hizbullah has raised up our heads and lifted our spirits", Ali Manna told Reuters as he mourned two nephews killed in a rocket attack by the Lebanese resistance group.

And they admire the fact that Hizbullah has proved a tenacious rival and is till holding out against the highly sophisticated Israeli military machine.

"For the first time there is a sense of regained dignity," said Rawda Atallah, head of the Arab Cultural Association in Haifa, a mixed Jewish-Arab city that has been one of the main targets of Hizbullah attacks.

"They feel for the first time a group is resisting and standing steadfast in the face of the Israeli army," she said.

"Hizbullah's popularity has increased immensely among the Arabs in Israel."

"The majority of the country supports the operation and is ready to support the price," Olmert's office quoted him as saying during a visit to military headquarters in the north.

"I give you all the means that you need and all of my support. We will not stop," he said.

In a sign of a possible escalation, Israel's army warned Lebanese south of the Litani River not to go outdoors after 10:00 pm (1900 GMT).

Israel's border with Lebanon runs eastwards from the Mediterranean coast about 30 kilometers (19 miles) south of the Litani, but moves much closer to the river as it turns north about 30 kilometers inland.

According to official tolls, more than 1,000 Lebanese have been killed and around 3,500 wounded in the offensive, which has also forced more than 915,000 from their homes and left the economy in ruins since its launch on July 12.

Sixty-one Israeli soldiers have also been killed while 36 civilians have died in a barrage of Hezbollah rocket fire from across the border.

The Israeli military launched fresh strikes Monday evening on Beirut's southern suburbs, a Hezbollah hub, setting off explosions which echoed across the capital.

Earlier Monday, Israeli warplanes bombed houses, bridges and roads in southern and eastern Lebanon.

The Israeli army also said it had downed a Hezbollah drone -- the latest sign of the military capabilities of the Lebanese militia.

The new wave of deadly raids came as Washington urged the quick passage of a UN resolution calling for a full halt to the fighting, although there was little sign of international agreement on a peace plan.

The UN Security Council scheduled a public debate for Tuesday on the conflict, which was expected to draw envoys from several Arab countries at the ministerial level.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was also expected to be at the UN headquarters.

Siniora said he refused to let Lebanon be a "punch bag" for Israel and made an emotional appeal for an end to the killings, as Arab foreign ministers gathered in Beirut threw their support behind his plan for a ceasefire.

Siniora called for help in seeking "an immediate and unconditional ceasefire."

"We do not want the Lebanese state and the Lebanese people to remain the punch bag of Israel or anyone else."

Wiping away tears, he told them: "Your standing with us is a right and a duty. Arab security is interlinked."

The Security Council had been expected to adopt a resolution jointly drafted by France and the United States by Tuesday, but diplomats said they could no longer say when a vote would take place after Lebanon demanded revisions.

Siniora said the draft text fails to insist on an immediate withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanon, which had pulled out of the country in 2000 after a bloody 22-year occupation.

Iran, one of the major backers of Hezbollah along with
Syria, dismissed the draft as a "political operation against Lebanon" while Damascus warned it was a recipe for further strife.

The draft, which co-author France said was still a work in progress and should be amended by Lebanon, calls for a "full cessation of hostilities" and the deployment of an international force in a buffer zone in south Lebanon.

US
President George W. Bush said the UN resolution was needed "as quickly as possible," while Rice said it would "take a little time" to ease Israeli and Lebanese concerns.

Siniora's own plan calls for an Israeli withdrawal, the expansion of the UN peacekeeping force sent to the area after a previous invasion in 1978, the deployment of the Lebanese army to the border and the disarming of Hezbollah.

The Lebanese government, including two Hezbollah cabinet members, approved a plan to deploy 15,000 troops to the border once Israel left and called up reserve troops in preparation.

Siniora, who wants an immediate halt to the conflict, accused the Israeli air force of "a deliberate massacre" in the southern village of Hula, saying "more than 40 martyrs" had died there Monday.

He later retracted his statement, saying it turned out that only one person had been killed. A spokesman for the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) later said five people had died in Hula, according to their workers at the scene.

Warplanes struck houses in villages around Sidon, the main city in the south, bombed roads linking the region with Syria, including the highway leading to the main border crossing, and hit targets in the Bekaa Valley.

The road to Syria, one of the few ways out of Lebanon for people trying to flee, has been knocked out repeatedly as Israel maintains a blockade that has left the country almost completely isolated from the outside world.

The southern port city of Tyre, which like Sidon has been swollen by an influx of people fleeing from outlying villages, was cut off from the rest of the country by Israeli bombardments against roads and a makeshift bridge, witnesses said.

The Israeli army said three soldiers were killed in fighting with Hezbollah around the border town of Bint Jbeil -- the scene of the fiercest ground combat of the conflict, bringing to 61 the number of military personnel killed.

Five civilians were injured when a new volley of rockets landed in northern Israel.

Top Israeli military commanders have sought permission to expand the ground offensive, with up to 20,000 troops in Lebanon to try to create a buffer zone several kilometers (miles) across the border.

Without guarantees of safe passage, the Red Cross has been unable to move supplies beyond the port city of Tyre to towns and villages south of the Litani River, where thousands of people are believed trapped, said Richard Huguenin, a spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross.

The Litani runs roughly parallel to the Lebanese-Israeli border, about 20 miles to the north. The area between it and the border has been the site of the heaviest Israeli bombardment and ground fighting with Hezbollah guerrillas.

"It is now a question of the humanitarian consequences of what is looking like a blockade," Huguenin told The Associated Press in Tyre.

"At night we ask for permission and in the morning we get either a red light or a green light and for the past 48 hours it has been red," he said.

The Israeli army told the AP Monday that humanitarian agencies wishing to send convoys into the area should coordinate with the military in advance as they have in the past. The army said that in the past, it has been necessary to deny permission for military operational reasons, but no convoy had ever been hit.

A Greek ship loaded with Red Cross supplies had been due Monday but was denied permission to dock in Tyre and was diverted to Sidon, north of the Litani, Huguenin said. Israeli warships have blockaded ports since the conflict began, only letting aid ships into Beirut and occasionally into the southern ports.

"It seems the military buildup has really begun in the last two days. It has certainly been a lot noisier," he said of the aerial bombing of areas around Tyre and south on the road to Naqoura.

The Red Cross estimates there are still 100,000 people south of the Litani. Among them are 27,000 in Tyre, 40,000 Palestinian refugees living in four camps that surround the city and 33,000 in villages.

Huguenin said the Red Cross has distributed aid throughout Tyre and has some supplies meant for villages south and east of the city, but is unable to deliver them.

"What do we do next?" he said. "We are getting phone calls from isolated areas in the south close to the border from people who need food and medicines."

He said people who did not leave during last week's pause in Israeli air assaults were among the most vulnerable - the poor, sick and those without vehicles. He spoke to elderly "who said if they were going to die, they wanted to die in their homes."

The Red Cross said it was not seeking a halt to the fighting but asked that at least one route be designated safe to allow aid through.

"The lifeline must be made to this part of the country. It is under blockade, no ships coming in, and the roads are blocked," said Huguenin.

Sidon, Lebanon's third-largest city, is now home to some 50,000 refugees. Last weekend, Israel dropped leaflets warning residents to flee, but Huguenin said there have been no reports of people leaving Sidon.

Annick Bouvier of the ICRC said in Geneva the relief agency had planned to reach some villages in southern Lebanon, "but due to the level of hostilities, it's impossible for us to proceed."

A Red Cross convoy did bring supplies to Marjayoun from Beirut on Monday, but it was the only convoy able to reach cities south of Sidon, an ICRC statement said.

The World Health Organization warned that 60 percent of the hospitals in Lebanon would have to close unless fuel was delivered this week.

"We urge all parties to ensure safe passage of fuel supplies to hospitals," said Dr. Ala Alwan of WHO.

As night fell, Israel declared a curfew in southern Lebanon, warning that all vehicles apart from humanitarian traffic would be at risk. Ground forces continued to run into fierce resistance in southern Lebanon. Hizbullah militants fired more than 100 rockets into northern Israel, wounding at least one.

But the Beirut attack was the day's bloodiest episode. Last night, local residents and rescue workers scrambled through the rubble and debris in the dark as the insides of an eight-storey building spilled out into a narrow street. Water from a burst pipe in a building opposite sprayed out a fine mist across the wreckage. Neighbouring residents, now stuck in teetering buildings, peered out of the back half of their sitting rooms as splintered furniture dangled out on the street below. A women in her nightdress on the sixth floor tried to retrieve something on what was left of her balcony as a chunk of her front room crashed down on to the street. An ambulance worker said he had counted 10 bodies so far. At least two were children.

Lebanese officials said there were many reports of other casualties throughout southern Lebanon but rescue workers were not able to reach the sites because of continued Israeli airstrikes. Israel also threatened to attack UN peacekeepers if they attempted to repair bomb-damaged bridges in southern Lebanon. UN officials contacted the Israeli army to inform them that a team of Chinese military engineers attached to the UN force in Lebanon intended to repair the bridge on the Beirut to Tyre road to enable the transport of humanitarian supplies.

According to the UN, Israeli officials said the engineers would become a target if they attempted to repair the bridge.

Senior UN officials reacted angrily to the destruction of a temporary causeway over the Litani river overnight. "We must be able to have movement throughout the country to deliver supplies. At this point we can't do that," said David Shearer, the humanitarian coordinator for Lebanon. "The deliberate targeting of civilian infrastructure is a violation of international law."

International aid groups have blamed Israel for not providing security guarantees, thereby paralysing the delivery of aid to the south. Even when aid reaches Tyre, convoys have to apply on a case by case basis for permission to take it out to the villages. Most applications are refused.

A convoy run from Beirut to Tyre by Médecins sans Frontières yesterday was forced to stop at the ruins of the causeway. Boxes of medicine were carried over a footbridge by hand and loaded up into separate vehicles on the other side.

Car passengers had to do the same, driving to the footbridge and waiting for transport on the other side.

Israel's army warned residents in southern Lebanon to remain indoors after 10pm yesterday and said anyone moving after that would be at risk. "Anyone who does travel is taking a high risk. There is no end period," an Israeli military source said. "This will allow us to track anyone potentially trying to launch rockets."

The source said the restriction on movement applied anywhere south of the Litani river, which is roughly 13 miles from Israel's northern border. He did not specify how the warning had been delivered.

Israel also said it shot down a Hizbullah drone."We located it over Lebanon and tracked it over the Mediterranean where we shot it down. Naval vessels picked up the debris for investigation," an Israeli military spokesman said. The Israeli army said it could not immediately say if it was carrying explosives.

Tyre was rocked yesterday by fresh Israeli airstrikes. Four buildings on the northern outskirts were crushed in pinpoint strikes which left adjacent buildings standing. The four destroyed buildings included the flat where the Israeli commandos had killed the two alleged Hizbullah leaders on Saturday.

Israeli media speculated the change may be a prelude to further Israeli incursions into Lebanon. The Israeli security cabinet is expected to meet Wednesday to discuss a plan to send troops further into Lebanon, to the Litani River about 30 kilometres from the Israel-Lebanon border.

Israeli Defence Minster Amir Peretz said Israel wants to occupy more areas of southern Lebanon to prevent Hezbollah firing rockets.

But the command change might also have been prompted by the inability of the Israeli forces to stop the Hezbollah attacks, which have killed 36 civilians. About 160 rockets fell on Israeli towns on Tuesday. No one was killed.

The army issued a statement saying armed forces chief Lt.-Gen. Dan Halutz appointed Kaplinksi, his deputy, to take over, even though Halutz retained "complete confidence" in Adam.

Adam told Israel Television that he would not resign while the fighting continued. "Soldiers are being killed. I don't think I can abandon them now."

Southern Lebanon a no-go zone

Early Tuesday, Israel dropped leaflets warning people in southern Lebanon that its forces planned to destroy any moving vehicles in an area south of the Litani River. The leaflets said Israeli forces will assume that moving vehicles in the area are transporting weapons for Hezbollah.

That ended traffic in the south, around the city of Tyre. Only pedestrians moved on roads and highways.

Although Israel said it would exempt relief convoys, the UN didn't attempt to move any supplies into the south because of the heavy shelling in the area, Christian Berthiaume of the World Food Program said. But supplies were arriving in other parts of the country.

Hezbollah, Israeli troops battle in south

Fighting on the ground continued on Tuesday, with Israeli forces attempting to gain control of villages and sites used by Hezbollah.

Israel pounded Hezbollah positions in south Lebanon. Israeli troops and Hezbollah exchanged gunfire near Bint Jbail, a village controlled by the militants that Israeli troops have been trying to capture for weeks.

The Israeli military said fighting near the village killed one of its soldiers and 15 Hezbollah militants. Hezbollah did not confirm the deaths.

Hezbollah TV reported that the militants attacked Israeli troops near the town of Naqoura, about three kilometres north of the Israeli-Lebanon border. The Israeli military said two of its reservists died in the attack.

UN meets over draft for ceasefire

Meanwhile, United Nations diplomats gathered in New York to discuss a draft resolution to end the fighting that entered its 28th day on Tuesday.

The UN Security Council is expected to vote on the resolution on Wednesday.

Lebanon and its Arab allies have indicated that they want Israeli forces to withdraw from the country immediately as part of a ceasefire deal.

This stratagem precipitated the renewed violence that erupted in June when Palestinians dug a tunnel under the barrier that surrounds Gaza and assaulted some Israeli soldiers, killing two and capturing one. They offered to exchange the soldier for the release of 95 women and 313 children who are among almost 10,000 Arabs in Israeli prisons, but this time Israel rejected a swap and attacked Gaza in an attempt to free the soldier and stop rocket fire into Israel. The resulting destruction brought reconciliation between warring Palestinian factions and support for them throughout the Arab world.

Hizbullah militants in south Lebanon then killed three Israeli soldiers and captured two others, and insisted on Israel's withdrawal from disputed territory and an exchange for some of the several thousand incarcerated Lebanese. With American backing, Israeli bombs and missiles rained down on Lebanon. Soon, Hizbullah rockets supplied by Syria and Iran were striking northern Israel.

It is inarguable that Israel has a right to defend itself against attacks on its citizens, but it is inhumane and counterproductive to punish civilian populations in the illogical hope that somehow they will blame Hamas and Hizbullah for provoking the devastating response. The result instead has been that broad Arab and worldwide support has been rallied for these groups, while condemnation of both Israel and the United States has intensified.

Israel belatedly announced, but did not carry out, a two-day cessation in bombing Lebanon, responding to the global condemnation of an air attack on the Lebanese village of Qana, where 57 civilians were killed and where 106 died from the same cause 10 years ago. As before there were expressions of "deep regret," a promise of "immediate investigation" and the explanation that dropped leaflets had warned families in the region to leave their homes.

The urgent need in Lebanon is that Israeli attacks stop, that Lebanon's regular military forces control the southern region of the country, that Hizbullah cease as a separate fighting force, and future attacks against Israel be prevented. Israel should withdraw from all Lebanese territory, including Shebaa Farms, and release the Lebanese prisoners. Yet Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has rejected such a cease-fire.

These are ambitious hopes, but even if the UN Security Council adopts and implements a resolution that would lead to such an eventual solution, it will provide just another band-aid and temporary relief. Tragically, the current conflict is part of the inevitably repetitive cycle of violence that results from the absence of a comprehensive settlement in the Middle East, exacerbated by the almost unprecedented six-year absence of any real effort to achieve such a goal.

Leaders on both sides ignore strong majorities that crave peace, allowing extremist-led violence to preempt all opportunities for building a political consensus. Traumatized Israelis cling to the false hope that their lives will be made safer by incremental unilateral withdrawals from occupied areas, while Palestinians see their remnant territories reduced to little more than human dumping grounds surrounded by a provocative "security barrier" that embarrasses Israel's friends and fails to bring safety or stability.

The general parameters of a long-term, two-state agreement are well known.

There will be no substantive and permanent peace for any peoples in this troubled region as long as Israel is violating key UN resolutions, official American policy and the international "road map" for peace by occupying Arab lands and oppressing the Palestinians. Except for mutually agreeable negotiated modifications, Israel's official pre-1967 borders must be honored. As were all previous administrations since the founding of Israel, US government leaders must be in the forefront of achieving this long-delayed goal.

A major impediment to progress is the US administration's strange policy that dialogue on controversial issues will be extended only as a reward for subservient behavior and will be withheld from those who reject US assertions. Direct engagement with the Palestine Liberation Organization or the Palestinian Authority and the government in Damascus will be necessary if secure negotiated settlements are to be achieved. Failure to address the issues and leaders involved risks the creation of an arc of even greater instability running from Jerusalem through Beirut, Damascus, Baghdad and Tehran.

The people of the Middle East deserve peace and justice, and we in the international community owe them our strong leadership and support.