Nine Israeli troops killed as battle rages in Lebanon: talks fail to agree on truce

Nine Israeli soldiers were killed in running battles with Hezbollah on the Lebanese border on Wednesday as the conflict entered its third week marked by the failure of international talks to agree on a truce.
Israel was also under international fire over the killing of four UN peacekeepers on Tuesday in what UN chief Kofi Annan charged was an "apparently deliberate" targeting of their post.
As the Israeli toll mounted in a war that has already cost 405 lives in Lebanon, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert laid out plans to set up a narrow security zone in southern Lebanon, which has borne the brunt of the Israeli offensive.
In Rome, far from the bombs and bloodshed, 15-nation crisis talks failed to agree on a call for an immediate cease-fire, effectively backing the US stance that there must first be a sustainable solution.
Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora despaired for his war-ravaged people as the meeting ended, saying his country was being "cut to pieces". "Is the value of human life less than in Lebanon than that of citizens elsewhere? Are we children of a lesser God? Is an Israeli teardrop worth more than a drop of Lebanese blood?"
Israel announced that eight soldiers had been killed in fighting around the key Hezbollah military stronghold of Bint Jbeil, bringing to 50 the number of Israelis killed in the worst cross-border fighting in a quarter century.
It was the highest toll since Israel launched its deadly offensive against Lebanon on July 12 to try to recover two soldiers captured by Hezbollah in border attacks that also killed eight servicemen.
Israel is also engaged in a similarly fierce assault in the Gaza Strip to retrieve a third captive servicemen held by Palestinians militants. A total of 17 Palestinians were killed on Wednesday alone, bringing the death toll to 133 since the offensive was launched in late June. Olmert, who has said he was determined to press on with Israel's war on Hezbollah, proposed the creation of a security zone in Lebanon to protect its border but he insisted there was no question of another occupation.
"The army will form a narrow strip of one to two kilometres (just over one mile) where there won't be any ground presence of Israeli troops," a lawmaker quoted Olmert as telling the foreign affairs and defence committee. Countries at the Rome meeting also agreed to hold multilateral talks soon on an international buffer force, an idea espoused by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice who ended a lightning visit to the Middle East on Tuesday.
"The mandate of the security force will be discussed over the next several days," Rice said. "We have asked for urgent meetings to take place so that a force can be put together."
Israel however, was not at the talks, nor were Syria or Iran, which both back Hezbollah and are accused by both the Jewish state and Washington of stoking the conflict. Governments around the world expressed shock and anger at the deaths in the Israeli raid on Tuesday, which Annan said appeared to target the observer post.
"I am shocked and deeply distressed by the apparently deliberate targeting by Israeli Defence Forces of a UN observer post in southern Lebanon that has killed two UN military observers, with two more feared dead," Annan said. Israel's UN ambassador Dan Gillerman said he was "surprised at these premature and erroneous assertions." Olmert however, phoned Annan and expressed "deep regrets" over the killing and said he would order a comprehensive inquiry.
Ireland said its most senior army officer in Lebanon had contacted the Israelis six times to warn them about shelling and bombing close to UN positions prior to the fatal air strike. Following a confirmed Chinese casualty, Lebanese security sources said the other three observers were an Austrian, a Canadian and a Finn.
The Lebanese source said three bodies had so far been recovered from the remains of the post in Khiam, once the site of an infamous Israeli jail but now a Hezbollah stronghold. Intense efforts were underway to recover the final body from beneath the rubble.
The Rome talks ended with a call to reach a truce "with the utmost urgency" but, in language the US administration has used since the start of the Israeli offensive, said a cease-fire "must be lasting, permanent and sustainable".