The Israeli army said today that it had succeeded in carving out a security zone of 20 villages in southern Lebanon up to four miles from the border, Israeli TV was reporting this afternoon.
"We have several positions of control in several villages…they will remain until a multinational force arrives," said a spokesman for the Israeli Defence Force.
UN observers in the area confirmed that Israeli forces had made two fresh incursions, as well as holding five other areas previously seized.
The Israeli government tonight ordered the army to prepare for an eventual seizure of southern Lebanon up to the Litani River, a natural strategic boundary that lies 13 miles north of the Israeli border, according to a spokesman for Amir Peretz, the defence minister.
As up to 10,000 Israeli troops were engaged on the ground with Hezbollah fighters, the Shia militant group intensified its rocket attacks, pounding northern Israel with 100 rockets in half an hour, killing eight people and injuring many others.
Israeli warplanes also resumed attacks, striking Beirut’s battered southern suburbs this morning after a six day halt, killing five people. More than 70 targets were hit throughout the country, with heavy air strikes in the eastern Bekaa valley and the northern Akkar region near the Syrian border as well as the southern border town of Nabatiyeh.
Earlier, in New York, American, British and French diplomats said that they were close to agreement on the wording of a UN resolution that would call for an immediate halt to fighting, and open the way for a second resolution authorising a multinational peacekeeping force.
A US State Department spokesman hoped to achieve a first resolution tomorrow, and pledged to work all weekend if that proved unrealistic. France has distributed a new draft resolution to the UN security council meeting which calls for an "immediate cessation of hostilities". The French ambassador, Jean-Marc de La Sabliere, said: "We are working very well. We are getting closer, much closer."
Muslim leaders, meeting in Malaysia today also demanded that the UN implement an immediate ceasefire in Lebanon.
The warring sides have spoken of their conditions for ending the fighting. In an interview with The Times today, Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minister said that Israeli troops would withdraw once a robust force of 15,000 foreign combat troops had been deployed in the south of the country.
Mr Olmert said that the conflict could be over as soon as the United Nations Security Council authorised an international force and the troops were in place - something he said could take place within days. "I do not think that it will take weeks," he said.
The leader of Hezbollah offered in a taped speech tonight to halt rocket attacks on Israeli cities if Israel would cease its bombardment of Lebanon. If Israel bombed Beirut proper, however, then Hezbollah would step up its missiles, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah said.
"If you strike Beirut, the Islamic Resistance will strike Tel Aviv and it is able to do so," Sheikh Nasrallah said in the video screened on Al Manar TV, a Hezbollah-sponsored channel. He added that his recruits were fighting "to the last breath and the last bullet".
Earlier, a Hezbollah spokesman had said that the Shia group would not stop firing until every last Israeli soldier had left Lebanese soil.
In London, Tony Blair, under pressure from his own Cabinet to justify his refusal to call for an immediate ceasefire, was also today optimistic that a ceasefire was getting closer. He acknowledged however that there was a risk that the destruction and death in the Middle East could fuel extremism and make finding a solution to the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah harder.
"It's a perfectly valid point that there may be so much damage done in the short term that it becomes more difficult to find a long term solution in the future," said Mr Blair.
"No sentient human being could fail to be moved by the suffering and death. It's terrible."
But, he added, this only fuelled his determination to find a lasting solution to the conflict that could pave the way for a long term peace.
The death toll in the fighting continued to rise. Israel’s offensive has killed more than 900 people and left 3,000 wounded, Fouad Siniora, the Lebanese Prime Minister said today. A third of the casualties in the conflict that has raged over the past three weeks were children under 12, he added.
In a video message to a summit of leaders of the Muslim world, Mr Siniora also said a quarter of the population – one million people - had been displaced. Fifty-six Israelis, including 37 soldiers, have been killed in the conflict.
In southern Lebanon, an lsraeli missile killed a family of three this morning when it slammed into a house in Taibeh, a village close to the border. Clashes with Israeli troops were also reported in another border village, Aita al-Shaab, where two Israeli tanks and two bulldozers were destroyed, killing and wounding their crews.
Security officials said that six missiles struck roads in the southern villages of Mlita and Ein Bouswar in the mountainous border region of Iqlim al Tuffah.
Israeli troops also raided southern Gaza early today, killing at least seven Palestinians, including four militants and an 8-year-old boy. Twenty-six Palestinians were wounded in the air strikes, at least 10 of them militants, security and hospital officials said.
Today's Hezbollah rocket attacks resulted in eight deaths inside Israel, and three Israeli soldiers were killed in fighting - the largest number of Israeli fatalities in a single day since eight people were killed on July 16 when a rocket struck a train maintenance depot in Haifa.
At least three people were killed in the northern village of Maalot when it was hit by more than 40 rockets. "It is a black day for our community," said Shlomo Buhbut, the Mayor.
Another two people were killed by a strike in the coastal city of Acre some, 16 miles south of the Lebanese border, in which at least five people were wounded.
Yesterday Hezbollah fired a record 231 rockets into Israel, with some penetrating the West Bank, the farthest that they have reached.
Binyamin Netanyahu, the leader of the Israeli opposition Likud party, warned today during a visit to London that a multi-national peacekeeping force could suffer the same fate as coalition forces in Iraq, acting as a magnet for violence by Islamic extremists. Such a force could break apart as smaller nations decided to quit, he said.
In his interview with The Times, Mr Olmert insisted that a peace-keeping force would have to have a tough mandate. Israel would not welcome a unit similar to the existing UN Interim Force In Lebanon (Unifil), which he said had proved ineffective in halting Hezbollah’s seizure of southern Lebanon.
"It has to be made up of armies, not of retirees, of real soldiers, not of pensioners who have come to spend leisurely months in south Lebanon but, rather, an army with combat units that is prepared to implement the UN resolution," he said.
"We will not pull out and we will not stop shooting until there is an international force that will effectively control the area."
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the President of Iran, said today that the only solution for the conflict was the elimination of the state of Israel. Mr Blair dismissed his remarks as shocking and very unhelpful.
