Hizbullah said it fired a new rocket that landed near the Israeli town of Afula, south of Haifa. Israeli authorities reported that five rockets hit fields outside Afula, causing no casualties.
Hizbullah announced it used the new rocket, the Khaibar-1 - named after a famed battle between Islam's prophet Muhammad and Jewish tribes in the Arabian peninsula - to strike the northern Israeli town of Afula. Guerrilla rockets have hit near town before, but this attack was the deepest yet.
The strike came two days after Hizbullah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah said in a televised speech that Hizbullah would start a new phase in the battle, striking beyond the Israeli city of Haifa, which has been hit several times in lethal rocket fire.
The group did not specify the range of the new rocket or give other details. But Israeli police said it was the first time a missile of this type has hit Israel and that it carried 220 pounds of explosives. That is about the size of the payload of the Fajr-3 rocket that Hezbollah has fired previously, but the Fajr-3 is not believed to have the range to hit Afula.
The heaviest known Hezbollah rocket is the Fajr-5, with a 440-pound payload and a range of 45 miles, able to hit Tel Aviv's northern outskirts.
The area around Afula, 30 miles south of the Israeli-Lebanese border area, has been struck before, but Israeli security officials said today's attacks were the southernmost so far.
Meanwhile, Israel killed 13 people during attacks on Lebanon today as air raids struck villages in the hills behind the southern port of Tyre, and hundreds of artillery rounds crashed across the border.
Security sources said at least eight people died in over 40 air raids in the south. Three were killed in overnight air strikes in the eastern Bekaa Valley.
The pounding of villages, where some civilians remain trapped, followed a decision by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's security cabinet to intensify air strikes and ground forays against Hizbullah, rather than launching a big invasion.
Despite growing world demands for an end to Israel's war with Hizbullah guerrillas, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice delayed a possible return to the region.
Ms Rice is likely to delay her departure from Malaysia until tomorrow, said a senior State Department official, dashing prospects that she would return to the Middle East on Friday.
Ms Rice came to Kuala Lumpur after a trip to Lebanon and Israel earlier in the week and a one-day conference in Rome that stopped short of calling for the violence to stop immediately.
Israel has taken Washington's refusal to demand an immediate ceasefire as permission to pursue an onslaught on Lebanon aimed at crippling Hizbullah who set off the conflict by seizing two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid on July 12th.
Hizbullah has kept up rocket strikes on northern Israel and fought Israeli ground incursions, especially near the southern town of Bint Jbeil, where sporadic fighting continued on Friday.
An Israeli military source said the army believed it had killed at least 200 Hizbullah fighters in the conflict. The Shia guerrillas have acknowledged only 31 dead.
Hundreds of civilians casualties and a humanitarian crisis in Lebanon have fuelled world pressure for an instant ceasefire.
Washington insists on finding a durable solution first - one that eliminates Hizbullah's capacity to menace Israel and thereby reduces the influence of its allies Syria and Iran.
UN Middle East envoy Terje Roed-Larsen said it would be hard to get a ceasefire agreed without involving Iran and Syria.
President Bush meets British Prime Minister Tony Blair in Washington later today. Mr Blair is under pressure to distance himself from his US ally and join Arab and European nations in demanding that the Lebanon war stop now.
France and European Union president Finland made clear yesterday they wanted an immediate truce.
An overwhelming majority of Israelis continue to support the war in Lebanon and say the country should be even more forthright in its actions, a newspaper poll showed today.
The survey showed that 82 per cent of all Israelis and 92 per cent of the Jewish population felt the operation against Hizbullah fighters in Lebanon was justified.