Hizbollah killed 11 Israeli soldiers today in its deadliest rocket strike yet and Israeli bombs killed 18 Lebanese civilians as Lebanon rejected a draft UN resolution to end the 26-day-old conflict.
The soldiers were killed and nine were wounded, medics said, when a rocket struck a group of reservists called up for the Lebanon offensive in the northern village of Kfar Giladi.
Soldiers near the scene held their heads and one wept as a military ambulance pulled away. Helicopters landed nearby to fly the badly wounded to hospitals further from the war front.
This afternoon several Israeli missiles hit the southern suburbs of Beirut as Israeli troops battled Hizbullah fighters in south Lebanon.
Meanwhile Lebanon's parliament speaker Nabih Berri said his country rejected the US-French draft Security Council resolution because it would let Israeli forces to remain on Lebanese soil.
Mr Berri, a Shia politician who has been the main channel between Hizbollah and Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, said the draft ignored the Beirut government's seven-point plan calling for a ceasefire, the withdrawal of Israeli forces and the return of all displaced civilians among other things.
"Lebanon and all of Lebanon rejects any resolution that is outside these seven points," Mr Berri told a news conference.
Hizbollah, backed by Syria and Iran, has killed 57 Israeli soldiers and 33 civilians in the conflict, sparked when its men snatched two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid on July 12th.
The Israeli army also claimed today it had captured one of the Hizbollah fighters who took part in the seizure of the soldiers.
At least 747 people have been killed in Lebanon during the war, including five who died in air raids on the Shia village of Ansar overnight.
Three civilians were killed in a strike near the southern village of Naqoura, security sources said. Two more civilians died when an Israeli air strike hit a pickup truck driving about 40 metres ahead of a UN aid convoy heading for the southern city of Tyre, UN sources said.
A Lebanese army soldier was killed in an air raid near Tyre. UN peacekeepers in south Lebanon said a mortar round fired by Hizbollah wounded three Chinese members of the force.
Israel views the UN draft favourably, a senior government official and Israeli media said, noting that it allowed Israel to respond to Hizbollah attacks after a truce and did not order Israel to withdraw its 10,000 soldiers from southern Lebanon. Israel wants its troops to remain until an international force can take over. Hizbollah says it will keep fighting until Israel stops bombing Lebanon and withdraws all its forces.
Israel's cabinet met to discuss the UN draft resolution, which could be put to a vote in New York on Monday or Tuesday.