Twelve hours after a fragile ceasefire in Lebanon took effect, all eyes are turned to the United Nations to see how swiftly it can deploy a 15,000 strong peacekeeping force to patrol the area.
Although the ceasefire appeared to be holding this evening, two Hezbollah fighters were killed in clashes with Israeli forces earlier in the day. Kofi Annan, the United Nations Secretary General, urged both sides to show restraint until a force could be deployed.
“I am relieved to note that the cessation of hostilities in Lebanon called for by the Security Council appears to be generally holding,” Mr Annan said in a statement. “I urge the parties to make every effort, in the interest of the civilian population on both sides, to continue to consolidate the cessation.”
In Paris, the foreign ministry spokesman, Denis Simonneau, said a peacekeeping force should be mobilised “as quickly as possible”.
A Lebanese cabinet minister, Marwan Hamade, told a French radio station that Lebanese soldiers could move into southern Lebanon as early as Wednesday.
A United Nations force, now with about 2,000 troops in south Lebanon, is due to be boosted to 15,000 soldiers and join a 15,000-man Lebanese army contingent.
Under the plan passed by the UN security council in New York on Friday, the combined force would gradually fill a buffer zone south of the Litani River, about 18 miles from the Israeli border, keeping the Hezbollah fighters out to the north and Israeli army to the south.
France and Italy, with Turkey and Malaysia, have indicated willingness to contribute troops to the peacekeeping deployment. About 800 French soldiers on two navy ships positioned off the Israeli coast are expected to be some of the first to arrive, while Britain has yet to announced if it will contribute any troops. Consultations to decide the exact make-up and mandate of the force are still needed, and it is uncertain when it will reach full capacity.
The first test of Lebanon's ceasefire came within two hours of the guns falling silent this morning, as Israeli soldiers shot dead a Hezbollah fighter in the war zone south of the Litani river.
Israeli army radio said that the dead Shia militant was among a group of "armed terrorists" who approached the troops and opened fire. A second Hezbollah militant was killed in a separate clash.
Elsewhere in Lebanon's war-torn south the ceasefire that took effect at 8am local time (6am BST) seemed to be solid, although the guns had continued to sound until seconds before the deadline.
"Except for local incidents, the ceasefire is holding," said Amir Peretz, the Israeli Defence Minister, seven hours after the firing stopped.
Lebanese civilians emerged from bomb shelters in the southern port city of Tyre as the sound of Israeli missile explosions was replaced by birdsong and the wash of the sea.
Aid convoys took to the roads south, and soon car jams began to build up as hundreds of vehicles - some loaded high with mattresses and luggage - snaked slowly around bomb craters and blasted bridges south of Beirut to try to make their way back to their shattered villages to inspect the damage.
Israel warned that restrictions on travel in southern Lebanon had not been lifted. Jerusalem has already said that movement on the roads would be interpreted as Hezbollah activity, although for now there were no reports of air strikes on cars as Israel avoided endangering the ceasefire.
An air and sea blockade also remains in place, and Israeli warplanes continue to roar over though the bombing has stopped.
The danger of rushing home was underlined when a child died and 15 people were wounded, as they accidentally set off what was probably an exploded bomblet left over from an Israeli cluster device. The Lebanese Interior Ministry appealed for civilians to wait for engineers to check their homes.
Civilians in northern Israel were being more cautious before emerging from their bomb shelters.
"We are telling them to stay in the safety of their shelters until everything is safe, and most are complying," said Ofer Zafrani, a bomb shelter administrator in Kiryat Shemona. More than half of the town's 20,000 population has fled south from the Hezbollah bombardment and the streets were deserted.
The truce has brought a halt - whether permanent remains to be seen - to five weeks of ferocious fighting and bombing in which around 1,100 Lebanese and 156 Israelis have died, and thousands more been wounded. A third of the Lebanese casualties were children. Most of the Israeli dead were soldiers.
Police in Lebanon said that at least 19 people died and 45 were wounded in the 24 hours before the truce took effect, in Israeli bombing raids in south Beirut, in the village of Brital in the eastern Bekaa valley, and in the southern villages close to the Israeli border.
Both sides claimed to have won after the ceasefire began. Hezbollah distributed leaflets today congratulating Lebanon on its "big victory", and thanking citizens for their patience during the Shia movement's 34-day war with Israel.
Mark Regev, an Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman, disagreed, saying: "The situation on the ground is advantageous, the diplomatic situation is advantageous to Israel."
He added that the Israeli pull-out of its troops had begun, and would be phased and incremental.
Plenty of dangers remain to the fragile truce, as both sides have substantial numbers of heavily armed troops intermingled in the war zone. Fears have been voiced that Hezbollah’s apparent last minute change of heart, refusing to disarm its guerrillas in the planned buffer zone along the Israeli border, could carry the seeds of the collapse of the truce.
A senior Lebanese government official told The Times that Hezbollah was refusing to give up any of its weapons or to move out of an agreed "arms-free zone" south of the Litani river.
A scheduled Cabinet meeting in Beirut to finalise plans to deploy 15,000 Lebanese troops to police the UN-mandated buffer zone was postponed after the two Hezbollah ministers in the coalition Government threatened to boycott it.
"Hezbollah changed its position, going back on what was agreed unanimously during Saturday’s Cabinet meeting to support the ceasefire proposals and immediately deploy the Lebanese Army," the senior Lebanese official said.
Meanwhile Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minister, was fighting to justify his conduct of the fighting as he addressed a special session of the Knesset, after both the Left and the Right joined forces to condemn his handling of the war, and his Government's acceptance of the UN Security Council resolution for a ceasefire.
Mr Olmert said he took full responsibility for the Israeli military offensive, which he claimed had been a success - although he acknowledged that Israel had received severe blows.
"Israeli soldiers have hurt the Hezbollah badly - we don't know to what extent yet," he said, adding that "the huge arsenal they have collected for many years" had been depleted. He described the UN ceasefire resolution as a "diplomatic achievement for Israel".
But the Prime Minister's speech was interrupted as he was loudly heckled on several sides. Knesset security guards intervened to eject the angry MPs.
At the UN, officials said that the organisation was taking a "wait-and-see" approach. A French military planning team is due to hold talks at the UN headquarters in New York today on the dispatch of a 15,000-strong UN force to work with the Lebanese Army to take over Israeli positions in the buffer zone, 20km (12 miles) wide.
Sweden announced that it would host a conference on August 31 for international donors to rebuild Lebanon's shattered infrastructure.
Israel used the countdown to the ceasefire to try to kill Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader, by bombing what it believed was his underground hideout in Beirut. In the fiercest bombardment that the capital had felt since the conflict began, 23 missiles landed in the southern suburbs within two minutes from Israeli jets and warships.
Hezbollah released a statement last night claiming that Sheikh Nasrallah and his key lieutenants were safe and had not been in the area.
After news of the postponement of the Cabinet meeting was announced in Beirut, there were five more strikes on the same area of the capital.
Israel also stepped up its air and artillery blitz against south Lebanon, with Israeli troops pressing to take control of as much territory as possible toward the Litani river before the scheduled truce.
But despite the Israeli offensive, more than 250 Hezbollah rockets were fired into northern Israel, including seven long-range missiles, killing a man of 70 and wounding 53. Yesterday’s tally — the highest to date — took the total since fighting began on July 12 to more than 4,000 rockets.
Hezbollah units repulsed Israel armoured thrusts, killing 24 Israeli soldiers on Saturday, the worst casualty toll in one day for Israeli troops since the conflict began. At least five soldiers died yesterday.
In the Gaza Strip, where hostilities broke out on 29 June when Palestinian militants raided an Israeli army post and kidnapped a soldier, today three Palestinians, including a 17-year-old boy, were killed by Israeli tank rounds near the northern town of Beit Hanoun, after militants fired two rockets into Ashkelon. Hospital officials said that a militant was wounded by the shells but that the dead were civilians.
