"The ICRC deplores the heavy impact of hostilities on civilians and on Lebanese Red Cross emergency medical personnel and assets."

It also deplored "the continuing lack of respect for the rules governing the conduct of hostilities, such as the distinction between military objectives and civilian persons and objects", the statement added.

The Israeli military has banned the movement of all vehicles in the region south of the Litani river, including near Tyre, warning they will be considered to be supporting the Shiite Muslim militia Hezbollah and attacked.

Only Red Cross and UN vehicles are exempted, but they still need prior authorisation from the Israelis to travel.

In a newspaper interview Sunday, the head of the ICRC's office in the embattled city of Tyre, Roland Huguenin, highlighted direct warnings to Israeli authorities.

"I tell and keep on repeating to Israeli authorities that they must respect the rights of victims," he told the Swiss newspaper Le Matin, after being asked about an overall lack of distinction between civilian and military assets in the conflict.

Huguenin said the air strikes were also affecting attempts to rescue civilians buried under bombed buildings.

"The Israeli air force is shooting at all vehicles except those of the ICRC.

"As a result, when a building collapses, machines such as diggers cannot intervene to lift concrete blocks and save the people stuck in the ruins," he explained.

Huguenin said he had been trying to help a woman and three children in a village 15 kilometres (10 miles) from Tyre who were sleeping in the cellar of their home when it was destroyed.

Although voices could be heard, rescuers could not bring in digging equipment to break through the ruins.

"I don't see in what way the outcome of the conflict could be changed by allowing rescuers to get civilians out of the ruins," he commented.

Alongside its role as a relief agency, the ICRC is the guardian of the Geneva Conventions, which guarantee protection for civilians and the wounded in conflicts.

Police said the mother, her three young children and their Sri Lankan maid were killed overnight when Israeli bombs flattened their home in the southern village of Burj el-Shemali.

Neighbours tried in vain to dig them out and rescue services had still not arrived at the site two hours later because Tyre was coming under continued raids.

Patients in a hospital in Tyre were in danger of suffering smoke inhalation after Israeli warplanes bombed a nearby filling station, sparking a huge fire, hospital director Jawad Najm told AFP.

Two rescue workers, including the chief of the Lebanese Red Cross in Tyre, Salam Daher, were wounded by shrapnel during raids near the hospital where they had been rushing to help extinguish the fire, police said.

Israeli raids killed two Palestinians and wounded seven others in the Tyre area as well as in the Ain el-Helweh refugee camp near the southern port city of Sidon, police said.

Three civilians were killed and 15 others wounded when Israeli war planes destroyed a house and a prayer building in the village of Ali an-Nahri east of the ancient city of Baalbek in eastern Lebanon.

Two civilians were killed and six others wounded in Israeli bombardments on a pick-up carrying gas canisters at the entrance of Baalbek.

In northern Lebanon, Israeli fighter-bombers destroyed two bridges in the northern Akkar plains that link the main city in north Lebanon, Tripoli, with the Syrian border, wounding six people.

The air strike on the bridge at Halba destroyed a large number of homes, causing the civilian casualties, said a hospital worker.

Two Lebanese soldiers stationed nearby were also wounded in the attacks, but none needed to be hospitalized.

The bridge in adjoining village was also destroyed. Eight other bridges in the area have already been knocked out.

Three buildings near a Lebanese army barracks at the southern entrance of Tyre were targeted by bombardments that left one civilian killed, four wounded and two still missing under the rubble.

Israeli fighter-bombers carried out over three dozen raids in the eastern Nabatiyeh region, destroying a three-story building and two structures used by Hezbollah's rescue service. Police were unable to provide any information about casualties.

All but one of the cabinet voted for the resolution that was approved by the Security Council on Friday to end a month-old war that has killed over 1,060 people in Lebanon and 140 Israelis. Shaul Mofaz, the former defense minister, abstained.

The resolution envisages a phased withdrawal of Israeli troops from southern Lebanon when violence subsides and deployment of 15,000 Lebanese troops and 15,000 U.N. peacekeepers.

Hostilities began on July 12 when Hizbollah guerrillas captured two Israeli soldiers and killed eight in a cross-border raid, then unleashed rocket fire at northern Israel after Israel launched an aerial offensive in Lebanon.

Despite the resolution, Israel has expanded its offensive in south Lebanon, tripling its forces there on Saturday in a bid to wipe out Hizbollah rocket launch sites before the ceasefire takes effect.

Nearly 30,000 troops were operating against Hizbollah targets in southern Lebanon on Sunday.

"Preferably, the fighting should stop now to respect the spirit and intent of the Council decision, the object of which was to save civilian lives, to spare the pain and suffering that the civilians on both sides are living through," Annan said Sudnay.

The Lebanese government on Saturday approved the Resolution 1701 -- albeit with reservations -- while Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said his Shiite Muslim movement would abide by an agreed ceasefire but also vowed to continue fighting as long as Israeli troops remained on Lebanese soil.

The worst cross-border conflict in a quarter century has killed more than 1,100 people in Lebanon, most of them civilians, and at least 151 Israelis, most of them soldiers, and laid waste to much of Lebanon's infrastructure.

Israel's cabinet was meeting Sunday to give its verdict on the resolution, which calls for a full cessations of hostilities and the deployment of a 15,000-strong international force in southern Lebanon.

But with Hezbollah vowing to fight until the last Israeli soldier leaves Lebanon and Israel stressing that it will respond to any attack on its troops or rocket fire, hopes of complete ceasefire in the immediate future looked dim.

Israel's massive assault involving 30,000 troops was continuing after the killing of 24 soldiers in its highest single-day death toll of the conflict, and troops were clashing with guerrillas near the southern port city of Tyre.

Dubai-based Al-Arabiya television reported that another seven Israeli soldiers were killed Sunday but this was not confirmed by the Israeli army.

In what the media have said is the largest ground operation since the 1973 Middle East war, Israel is sweeping through south Lebanon where Hezbollah is rooted -- some troops reaching the strategic Litani River which runs as far as 30 kilometres (19 miles) from the border.

Fighter jets also pounded targets in the south, east and north of Lebanon, and at least 11 civilians were killed, including a mother and her three children, Lebanese police said.

Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres sought to put a postive spin on the war's outcome despite the failure to stem the hail of Hezbollah rockets on the north of the country, which killed a 70-year-old man on Sunday.

"I think that we have finished more or less the victors both militarily and politically," Peres told army radio, predicting that Hezbollah would end with "its tail between its legs."

Trade Minister Eli Yishai also issued a stark warning to Lebanon even if the ceasefire comes into force, saying: "If a single stone is thrown at Israel from whatever village that happens, it should be turned into a pile of stones."

In Tyre, warplanes bombed five petrol stations, sparking a huge fire that threatened to engulf a nearby hospital.

"The flames are lashing the building, our ill and wounded patients are threatened with smoke inhalation," hospital director Jawad Najm told AFP. "Nobody has come to help. Not the firefighters, not neighbours."

Fierce clashes between Hezbollah militants and Israeli troops continued through the night southeast of Tyre, on the outskirts of the bombed-out militant stronghold of Khiam.

The International Committee of the Red Cross slammed the continuing heavy civilian casualties as unacceptable.

"It is unacceptable that after more than 30 days of ongoing military operations, all necessary precautions to spare civilian life and those engaged in medical work have still not been taken," the agency said.

In addition to the heavy death toll in Lebanon, more than 900,000 people have been displaced by Israeli bombardments that have left much of the country's infrastructure in ruins.

The Israeli general in charge of the northern command said he hoped troops involved in the expanded offensive will have secured control of most of south Lebanon by Monday.

"I think we will be in a much better situation (on Monday) than we are today," General Udi Adam said. "Assuming that the ceasefire will take effect, we will stop the moment we are told. If it doesn't, we could continue."

The Litani has served as a tactical boundary for Israel's operations in Lebanon since it first invaded its northern neighbour in 1978, leading to a long and bloody occupation that ended only six years ago.

The UN resolution, drafted by the United States and France, calls for all Israeli troops to withdraw from southern Lebanon after an end to the fighting.

It also calls for the release of the two captive Israeli soldiers whose seizure on July 12 triggered the conflict, and for a solution to the issue of Lebanese prisoners held by Israel.

The resolution authorizes an increase in the current UN Interim Force in Lebanon's strength to a maximum of 15,000 troops from about 1,990 now. They will be matched by the 15,000 troops Lebanon plans to send to the south.

While approving the resolution, the Lebanese cabinet expressed reservations that it did not go far enough in condemning the large-scale Israeli destruction and that it failed to address the issue of the Israeli-occupied Shebaa farms.

Under the truce deal, approved by the U.N. Security Council on Friday, some 15,000 U.N. peacekeepers would be deployed along the Israel-Lebanon border to keep Hezbollah guerrillas away from Israel.

Israel has accepted the deal, but Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said it still needs to be approved by his Cabinet on Sunday.

Israeli officials said late Friday that troops are to make a final push to clear as much territory as possible of Hezbollah gunmen to make it easier for the international force, along with 15,000 Lebanese soldier, to take over.

The Israeli operations could include air strikes against arms convoys traveling anywhere in Lebanese territory, a senior Israeli official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.

Major-General Benny Gantz, head of the ground forces branch, told reporters that the Israeli army will cease fire if Hizbollah will cease fire.

But he added: "The ceasefire is not a cessation of Israeli army activity in the Lebanon arena ... It will protect its troops and civilians."

Like Israel, Hizbollah has said it will abide by the U.N. resolution. But the guerrilla group said it will carry on confronting any Israeli soldiers on Lebanese soil.

"It will be a fragile truce," said a Western diplomat involved in the deliberations.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's cabinet formally approved the resolution on Sunday. The United Nations said Israeli and Lebanese leaders had agreed a truce would take effect at 8 a.m. (0500 GMT) on Monday.

CLEARING OUT HIZBOLLAH

The truce will mark the end of Israel's offensive operations, senior Israeli officials said.

But they said the army would press ahead with operations aimed at "clearing out" Hizbollah fighters from areas in southern Lebanon where some 30,000 Israeli troops have been deployed ahead of the truce.

A Western diplomat said the United States and other major powers would not object to such "mopping up" operations, provided they are restricted to the south.

The resolution also imposes an arms embargo in Lebanon on the delivery of weapons or military equipment to "any entity or individual" excluding the Lebanese army and U.N. troops.

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said the embargo means that any "arms entering Lebanon for Hizbollah would be a violation of the resolution."

"As a result, if no one else was acting to prevent that violation, Israel would be entitled to do so," Regev said, without going into details.

Israel has attacked vehicles it said were carrying weapons to Hizbollah during the month-long war. But some convoys turned out to be carrying civilians, not weapons. An air strike on a convoy on Friday killed a Lebanese Red Cross worker and six other civilians.

A senior Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Israel was very concerned that the embargo outlined in the resolution will not be enforced, putting the onus on Israel to act militarily.

"We will not allow the re-supply of rockets and ammunition to Hizbollah if they try to do it under the pretext of the cessation of hostilities," the official said.

"Violation of the embargo... is something that is clearly an offensive move against Israel. It is therefore something that we cannot accept and we have full right to take defensive measures again," the official added.

Before the marchers were able to leave the village soldiers blocked their route, announced the demonstration illegal and then immediately fired sound grenades and rubber bullets from close range. The solders' commander claimed the demonstration was illegal although an Israeli court has previously confirmed the right of Bil'in villagers to hold demonstrations.

http://www.palsolidarity.org/main

The International Solidarity Movement (ISM) is a Palestinian-led non-violent resistance movement committed to ending Israel's illegal occupation of Palestinian land. We call for full compliance with all relevant UN resolutions and international law.

The ICRC said it had not been able to reach villages where it had hoped to take several hundred people, including wounded, to safety in the north. "Obviously we will continue to try to reach and supply these villages and evacuate the wounded and sick," said spokeswoman Antonella Notari.

ICRC chief Jakob Kellenberger said after talks in Jerusalem on Thursday: "The time for improved access is long overdue."

Israel's month-old war with Hizbollah guerrillas has killed at least 1,023 people in Lebanon and destroyed an estimated $2.5 billion of infrastructure, while 123 Israelis have been killed.

The U.N. World Food Program, overseeing logistics for U.N. agencies, said a 15-truck convoy to the eastern town of Baalbek halted at the city of Zahle due to shelling on the road ahead.

It also received Israeli clearance for convoys to Nabatiyeh, a town north of the Litani, but could not reach Tyre, the biggest city south of the river, or border villages.

"We have clearance for everything north of the Litani," said WFP spokesman Robin Lodge. "Below that it's still a no-go area."

The World Health Organization was receiving requests for fuel from at least 24 private hospitals and was looking into transporting a 10-day supply for those in most urgent need.

Will the Security Council allow itself to be manipulated into remaining silent about Israel's massive new push into Lebanese territory? And on the very eve of the council's vote, such a thing is custom-made to make an early cease-fire less likely. Security Council members should not forget the rebuke of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan after their vote. The resolution, he said, had taken far too long and as a result the reputation of the UN had been seriously tarnished. If the organization is to play a real role in the restoration of peace and Lebanese sovereignty, it must now be seen to be acting firmly in assessing who is doing what to sabotage and delay the cease-fire.

Resolution 1701 already rides roughshod over the legitimate concerns of the Arab world about protecting both Lebanese sovereignty and Lebanese civilians. It places immediate pressure on the cease-fire process which could cause the whole process to fail and thus allow Israel to continue with its own brutal solution, based on purely "defensive" grounds. How "defensive" does the UN Security Council consider the attack Friday on the hundreds of vehicles fleeing north from the Israeli-occupied Lebanese town of Marjayoun? At least seven people were killed when an Israeli drone fired rockets at the convoy which was heading away from the fighting. The Israelis knew that very well since they had watched it leave the town. And they also knew that in that long line of vulnerable vehicles were 350 members of the Lebanese Army and security forces, the very people whom the Israelis pretend they want to be in control of southern Lebanon.

As long as Israeli troops continue their incursions into Lebanon, they know those incursions will be resisted and, according to 1701, resistance will give them the excuse to continue their bloody depredations. It will also enable them to try to throw the blame for the worsening humanitarian crisis onto the Hezbollah fighters who oppose them. Even though it is Israeli weapons that have cut roads and bridges, Israeli warplanes that have destroyed vehicles - even those transporting innocent civilians who want only to flee to safety - the Israelis will deny the death and destruction are their responsibility.

Can the Security Council possibly accept so brazen a distortion of what the whole world knows is true?

So I sat on the carpet in my living room and watched all these heavily armed chaps at Heathrow protecting the British people from annihilation and then on came President George Bush to tell us that we were all fighting "Islamic fascism". There were more thumps in the darkness across Beirut where an awful lot of people are suffering from terror--although I can assure George W that while the pilots of the aircraft dropping bombs across the city in which I have lived for 30 years may or may not be fascists, they are definitely not Islamic.

And there, of course, was the same old problem. To protect the British people--and the American people--from "Islamic terror", we must have lots and lots of heavily armed policemen and soldiers and plainclothes police and endless departments of anti-terrorism, homeland security and other more sordid folk like the American torturers--some of them sadistic women--at Abu Ghraib and Baghram and Guantanamo. Yet the only way to protect ourselves from the real violence which may--and probably will--be visited upon us, is to deal, morally, with courage and with justice, with the tragedy of Lebanon and "Palestine" and Iraq and Afghanistan. And this we will not do.

I would, frankly, love to have Paul Stephenson out in Beirut to counter a little terror in my part of the world--Hizbollah terror and Israeli terror. But this, of course, is something that Paul and his lads don't have the spittle for. It's one thing to sound off about the alleged iniquities of alleged suspects of an alleged plot to create alleged terror--quite another to deal with the causes of that terror and to do so in the face of great danger.

I was amused to see that Bush--just before my electricity was cut off again--still mendaciously tells us that the "terrorists" hate us because of "our freedoms". Not because we support the Israelis who have massacred refugee columns, fired into Red Cross ambulances and slaughtered more than 1,000 Lebanese civilians--here indeed are crimes for Paul Stephenson to investigate--but because they hate our "freedoms".

And I notice with despair that our journalists again suck on the hind tit of authority, quoting endless (and anonymous) "security sources" without once challenging their information or the timing of Paul's "terror plot" discoveries or the nature of the details--somehow, "fizzy drinks bottles" doesn't quite work for me--nor the reasons why, if this whole panjandrum is correct, anyone would want to carry out such atrocities. We are told that the arrested men are Muslims. Now isn't that interesting? Muslims. This means that many of them--or their families--originally come from south-west Asia and the Middle East, from the area that encompasses Afghanistan, Iraq, "Palestine" and Lebanon.

In the old days, chaps like Paul used to pull out a map when faced with folk of different origins or religion or indeed different names. Indeed, if Paul Stephenson takes a school atlas, he'll notice that there are an awful lot of violent problems and injustice and suffering and--a speciality, it seems, of the Metropolitan Police--of death in the area from which the families of these "Muslims" come.

Could there be a connection, I wonder? Dare we look for a motive for the crime, or rather the "alleged crime"? The Met used to be pretty good at looking for motives. But not, of course, in the "war on terror", where--if he really searched for real motives--my favorite policeman would swiftly be back on the beat as Constable Paul Stephenson.

Take yesterday morning. On day 31of the Israeli version of the "war on terror"--a conflict to which Paul and the lads in blue apparently subscribe by proxy--an Israeli aircraft blew up the only remaining bridge to the Syrian frontier in northern Lebanon, in the mountainous and beautiful Akka district above the Mediterranean. With their usual sensitivity, the pilots who bombed the bridge--no terrorists they, mark you--chose to destroy the bridge when ordinary cars were crossing. So they massacred the 12 civilians who happened to be on the bridge. In the real world, we call that a war crime. Indeed, it's a crime worthy of the attention of Paul and his lads. But alas, Stephenson's job is to frighten the British people, not to stop the crimes that are the real reason for the British to be frightened.

Personally, I'm all for arresting criminals, be they of the "Islamic fascist" variety or the Bin Laden variety or the Israeli variety--their warriors of the air really should be arrested next time they drop into Heathrow--or the American variety (Abu Ghraib cum laude) and indeed of the kind that blow out the brains of Tube train passengers. But I don't think Paul Stephenson is. I think he huffs and he puffs but I do not think he stands for law and order. He works for the Ministry of Fear which, by its very nature, is not interested in motives or injustice. And I have to say, watching his performance before the next power cut last night, I thought he was doing a pretty good job for his masters.

"The group has been reported to be planning and conducting training for future attacks, like the attack in Mahmudiya July 17 that killed 42," the U.S. military said in a statement.

In a separate operation in a south Baghdad district called Um al-Maalif, Iraqi soldiers killed eight militants.

Beefed-up U.S. and Iraqi forces this week began a systematic operation to claim back Baghdad's most dangerous rebel strongholds in an attempt to restore security and shore up confidence in the new Shi'ite-led government.

U.S. officers now talk openly about the risk of a full-scale civil war unless they can calm conditions in Baghdad.

Some 50,000 U.S. and Iraqi forces are taking part in Operation Together Forward. Similar campaigns have failed in the past but Washington hopes to cut violence significantly by the end of September.

LITTLE SUCCESS

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, in power since May, has had little success in bringing the country's rival factions together, and about 100 Iraqis die every day.

A suicide bomber killed 35 people on Thursday near one of the most revered sites in the Shi'ite world, the Imam Ali shrine in Najaf, in the bloodiest single attack since mid-July.

U.S. Marines and soldiers killed 26 insurgents and wounded six in prolonged fighting overnight Friday in Ramadi, west of Baghdad, said the military.

"Marines and soldiers...were attacked at multiple locations with rocket-propelled grenades, medium machinegun fire and small arms fire from buildings targeting outposts in the northwest portion of the city," the U.S. military said in a statement.

Ramadi is a bastion of the Sunni-led insurgency trying to topple the government, and violence has also spread to the Shi'ite south.

Three died in a bomb blast in Basra, the country's second largest city, where Maliki has been forced to tighten security after a spike in violence between Shi'ite gangs and militias.

In central Baghdad, police said two civilians were killed and three wounded in a roadside bomb attack aimed at a police patrol on one of the city's main highways.

In Baquba, 65 km (40 miles) north of Baghdad, seven policeman were wounded in a roadside bomb and gunmen assassinated a police captain.

Blackwater's highly lucrative "diplomatic security" contract was officially awarded under the State Department's little-known Worldwide Personal Protective Service (WPPS) program, described in State Department documents as a government initiative to protect US officials as well as "certain foreign government high level officials whenever the need arises."

A heavily redacted 2005 government audit of Blackwater's WPPS contract proposal, obtained by The Nation, reveals that Blackwater included profit in its overhead and its total costs, which would result "not only in a duplication of profit but a pyramiding of profit since in effect Blackwater is applying profit to profit." The audit also found that the company tried to inflate its profits by representing different Blackwater divisions as wholly separate companies.

The WPPS contract awarded in 2004 was divided among a handful of companies, among them DynCorp and Triple Canopy. Blackwater was originally slated to be paid $229.5 million for five years, according to a State Department contract list. Yet as of June 30, just two years into the program, it had been paid a total of $321,715,794. When confronted with this apparent $100 million discrepancy, the State Department could not readily explain it. Blackwater's two years of WPPS earnings exceed many estimates of the company's total government contracts, which the Virginian-Pilot recently put at $290 million combined since 2000. Six years ago the government paid Blackwater less than $250,000.

"This underscores the need for Congress to exercise real oversight on the runaway use of secret companies that have strong connections to the Bush Administration, for clandestine services all over the world," says Illinois Democrat Jan Schakowsky, a leading Congressional critic of private military companies.

"This whole business of security is just insidious," says former Assistant Defense Secretary Philip Coyle, who worked at the Pentagon from 1994 to 2001. "The costs keep going up and there is no end in sight to what you can spend. What happens is you keep raising the threat levels to require more actions and more contracts to overcome these imaginary threats. It's an endless spiral."

In soliciting bids for the 2004 global contract, the State Department cited a need born of "the continual turmoil in the Mid East, and the post-war stabilization efforts by the United States Government in Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq." It said the government "is unable to provide protective services on a long-term basis from its pool of special agents, thus, outside contractual support is required." Former Assistant Defense Secretary Coyle, now with the Center for Defense Information, believes the privatization of security duties historically fulfilled by US Marines and other active-duty military is directly related to the Iraq occupation. "Obviously the military could do it, but indeed the Administration is looking for places to get more troops for Iraq," Coyle says.

While the WPPS program and the broader use of private security contractors is not new, it has escalated dramatically under the Bush Administration. According to the most recent Government Accountability Office report, some 48,000 private soldiers, working for 181 private military firms, are deployed in Iraq alone. Blackwater, now one of the most prominent and successful companies providing soldiers in Iraq, was relatively unknown until March 31, 2004, when four of its contractors were ambushed and killed in Falluja [see Scahill, "Blood Is Thicker Than Blackwater," May 8]. In the days and weeks that followed, company executives hired ultra--connected lobbyists and were welcomed by powerful government officials as heroes, allowing the firm to solidify its role in the Bush Administration's foreign policy apparatus.

Since 2003 Blackwater has held the high-profile job of guarding senior US officials in Iraq, including all three occupation-era ambassadors. The vaunted WPPS contract was awarded at the end of Paul Bremer's tenure in Baghdad. Blackwater, which did not respond to repeated requests for comment, refuses to divulge where its forces are deployed under the program. WPPS documents say contractors may be dispatched almost anywhere, including on US soil. The State Department says explicitly there is a "long-term" need for these "protective services." Schakowsky says she will request a formal explanation from the department of the WPPS contract: "We need to know why the Bush Administration keeps writing blank checks to Blackwater and others, while it keeps Congress and the American people in the dark."