Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has imposed three conditions for a cease-fire in Lebanon, where Israel has been waging a deadly three-day assault, a government spokesman said Friday. "The Prime Minister is prepared to finish our operations in Lebanon if Hezbollah releases our two soldiers, stops its rocket fire and if the Lebanese government decides to implement UN Security Council resolution 1559," Miri Eisin told AFP.
The resolution calls for the disarmament of Hezbollah. "If these conditions are met, we are ready to cooperate with a delegation from the United Nations," the spokeswoman said. Eisin denied there was international pressure preventing Israel from continuing its operations, which Lebanon says have killed at least 60 people, but acknowledged there had been "criticisms".
Israel pounded Lebanon for the third straight day Friday, targeting Hizbollah's power base and the international airport in attacks that have also hit bridges, roads and power stations.
Eisin refused to set a deadline for the end of the Israeli offensive, which also includes an air and sea blockade on Lebanon, one of the smallest countries in the Middle East. Public radio, quoting ministers, said the government had not expected such heavy international criticism over its Lebanese offensive so far as "operations remain essentially concentrated on Hezbollah".
Israel bombed the home of Hizbollah's leader in Beirut on Friday as part of a widening assault in Lebanon since Hizbollah captured two Israeli soldiers and killed eight. Hizbollah said Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah was safe.
Israeli air strikes destroyed Nasrallah's apartment building and a main Hizbollah office in southern Beirut, Hizbollah said.
It said Nasrallah and his family were not hurt in the raids, without saying if they had been at home at the time. The Israeli army said warplanes attacked Hizbollah's headquarters in Beirut, but a spokeswoman would not say if it was an attempt to kill Nasrallah.
Israel also attacked many Lebanese civilian installations in the third day of its campaign to force the release of the two Israeli soldiers and halt cross-border rocket strikes. Israeli aircraft rocketed runways at Beirut's international airport and bombed a flyover just to the south, witnesses said.
The airport has been shut since runways and fuel tanks were hit on Thursday. Four planes from Lebanon's Middle East Airlines had taken off empty for Amman shortly before the latest raids.
Israeli warplanes blasted the main Beirut-Damascus highway overnight, tightening an air, sea and land blockade of Lebanon, and bombed targets in Beirut's teeming suburbs, killing three people and wounding 40, security sources said.
A late afternoon air strike in southern Beirut's Haret Hreik district targeted Hizbollah's radio station, witnesses said. The radio stayed on the air. One person was wounded. Air strikes in south Lebanon killed five more people.
Their deaths brought to 66 the number of people, almost all civilians, killed in Lebanon in the past three days, police said. More than 200 people have been wounded.
Hizbollah rocket attacks on northern Israel have now killed four Israelis and wounded more than 150. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's office said the rocket salvos "cannot and will not be allowed to continue". Snow told reporters that Bush had spoken by telephone to Lebanon's prime minister among other Middle East leaders.
He said Bush believed the Israelis have the right to protect themselves, but should limit "so-called collateral damage not only to facilities but also to human lives". Snow said Siniora had suggested a cease-fire, which Washington favoured, but thought would be hard to pull off. "It is unlikely that either or both parties are going to agree to that at this juncture," Snow said.
The violence in Lebanon coincided with an Israeli incursion into the Gaza Strip launched last month to try to retrieve another captured soldier and halt Palestinian rocket fire. Israel bombed offices of Hamas lawmakers, destroyed a bridge and fired a tank shell that killed a Palestinian on Friday.
Israeli forces withdrew overnight from central Gaza after two days of fighting, but did not rule out going back in. Palestinian gunmen blew a huge hole in the border wall between Gaza and Egypt, allowing hundreds of Gazans, who had been stranded on the closed border for two weeks to enter the Strip.
Israeli helicopters opened fire near the Palestinians as they poured in, a Reuters witness said. The army said the intention was to prevent them from crossing the border wall.
Since the Gaza offensive was launched on June 28, Israel has killed more than 80 Palestinians, a majority of them militants.
Hizbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah said on Friday his movement's guerrillas had destroyed the Israeli warship which had struck his headquarters in the southern suburbs of Beirut. The Israeli military said only that a ship had been "lightly hit". "Surprises will start from now. Now, off the coast of the sea, the warship which attacked... the southern suburbs... watch it burning and drowning," Nasrallah said.
Lebanese police said two missiles fired from the southern suburbs of Beirut had targeted an Israeli warship off the coast of the Lebanese capital. "There was a navy ship that was lightly hit along the Lebanese shore," an Israeli military spokeswoman told AFP, refusing to give any further details when asked if there any casualties.
The debate highlighted divisions in the Council, with the United States standing alone in refusing to even caution restraint from Israel over its military offensives in both Lebanon and Gaza.
US Ambassador John Bolton laid sole blame for the escalating violence in the region on Iran and Syria and their support for militant groups like Hezbollah and the armed wing of Hamas.
Council members united in condemning the Hezbollah action and repeated rocket attacks into Israel, but most also voiced concern over the level of the Israeli military response which French Ambassador Jean-Marc de La Sabliere described as "disproportionate."
The United States, however, made no mention whatsoever of the Israeli attacks, calling instead on Iran and Syria to stop their sponsorship of the Hezbollah and Hamas militants.
The Lebanese government had called the debate to seek a council decision calling for a comprehensive cease-fire, the lifting of Israeli air and sea blockades imposed upon Lebanon and an end to the air strikes.
"We are meeting in the shadow of a widespread barbaric aggression waged by Israel against my nation," Mahmoud said, adding that the Israeli action was aimed at "bringing Lebanon to its knees and subverting it by any means." An expected presidential statement from the Security Council failed to materialise from the meeting after what diplomatic sources said was disagreement on the language to be used.
Instead the member states put out a press statement welcoming the decision by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to send a three-man crisis team to the Middle East.
The brief statement called on "all concerned states and parties to extend their full co-operation to the mission," which has been tasked with a one-week mission to rein in escalating violence in the region.