Israel unleashed more air strikes on Lebanon and Hizbollah fired rockets at Haifa yesterday as a senior UN official demanded a halt to the violence to allow aid to reach desperate civilians.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, leaving for the Middle East later in the day, has said she will pursue a lasting solution, not an immediate ceasefire. Washington blames Hizbollah and its allies, Syria and Iran, for the conflict.

The Israeli army said it had yet to decide whether to launch a major ground incursion into Lebanon, while Defence Minister Amir Peretz said Israel could accept a new NATO-led peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon to keep Hizbollah guerrillas at bay.

Civilians took the brunt of renewed bombardments in a war that has cost at least 361 lives in Lebanon and 37 in Israel. ?The scenes were horrific. There were wounded people on the road and there was a wounded person in the building too. There was terrible destruction,? said factory worker Keren Hagigi at an industrial zone in Haifa hit by Hizbollah rockets.

Israeli warplanes bombed targets in Beirut and east and south Lebanon, killing at least five civilians and wounding about 80, many of them in the southern port of Tyre.

Half a dozen blasts echoed across the Lebanese capital as jets roared over the Shi?ite southern suburbs in the early hours. Air strikes also destroyed a Shi?ite religious centre in the southern port city of Sidon, wounding four people.

A dozen Israeli air raids on the eastern Bekaa Valley destroyed three factories, a house and several bridges, killing at least one civilian and wounding seven. Two other civilians died in a raid on a southern village, security sources said.

Two people were killed and 15 wounded when Hizbollah rockets slammed into apartments and vehicles in Haifa, Israel?s third largest city, which lies 35 km south of the border. Hizbollah said it had hit Haifa with Raad (Thunder) 2 rockets, which are short-range Iranian-made missiles.

Humanitarian crisis

UN emergency relief coordinator Jan Egeland said the violence must stop to enable major aid efforts to get under way.

?The rockets going into Israel have to stop,? he said. ?The enormous bombardment that we have seen here with one block after another being levelled has to stop,? he said as he toured Beirut?s shattered Haret Hreik area, a Hizbollah stronghold.

He said Israeli bombing of the once-crowded Shi?ite district had breached humanitarian law. ?It is horrific. I did not know it was block after block of houses,? he told reporters.

Egeland, who has estimated that $100 million is urgently needed to tackle an unfolding humanitarian crisis in Lebanon, plans to travel to Israel tomorrow to negotiate safe corridors by land, sea and air for international aid.

The war in Lebanon has displaced half a million people. Others are trapped by fighting, especially in border villages.

More than 1,000 Hizbollah rockets have killed 17 Israeli civilians, prompting between a third to a half of all residents in northern Israel to escape the bombardment, officials said.

Twenty Israeli soldiers have also been killed in the conflict, launched when Hizbollah guerrillas seized two soldiers and killed eight in a cross-border raid on July 12.

Israel?s Army Radio said more troops were expected to move into southern Lebanon on Sunday to widen the army?s ground operations against Hizbollah close to the frontier. But the army said military chief Lieutenant-General Dan Halutz has yet to decide to launch a major ground invasion.

Israel has called up thousands of reserve soldiers and has assembled troops and tanks on its northern border for days, heightening speculation a land invasion is imminent to halt rocket attacks and drive Hizbollah away from the border.

Peretz said Israel would back the deployment of a temporary international peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon, an idea earlier described as premature by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

?Due to the weakness of the Lebanese army, we support the deployment in the south of a multi-national force with broad authority,? Peretz told German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

Peretz gave no time-frame for deploying the force, but suggested it would be led by NATO. Israel views the existing UN peacekeeping force in south Lebanon as a failure.

Tom PERRY

THREAT

<B>Syria will join conflict if Israeli troops approach</B>

■ Syria will enter the Israeli-Hizbollah conflict if Israeli ground troops enter Lebanon and approach Syria, Syrian Information Minister Mohsen Bilal said in an interview published yesterday. ?If Israel invades Lebanon over ground and comes near to us, Syria will not sit tight. She will join the conflict,? he told newspaper ABC.

?We have cooperation forces on alert,? he added. ?If Israeli troops provoke us, Damascus will act to guarantee the national security of Syrian territory.?

Bilal was in Madrid for talks with Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos, a former EU envoy to the Middle East, and said he welcomed Spain?s willingness to take on a mediating role in the conflict.

He criticised the United States for not working towards a ceasefire. ?Are they waiting for Israel to destroy Lebanon and for it to have to be evacuated completely?? he said. Bilal denied Syria was bankrolling Hizbollah, but said the group had Damascus? moral support and sympathy. Syria is a main backer of Hizbollah, whose fighters captured Israeli soldiers in a cross-border operation that sparked violent Israeli reprisals that have so far claimed more than 350 lives, mostly civilians in Lebanon

<B>FACTS</B>

Latest developments in the Middle East

■ Here are developments in the Middle East on the 11th day of Israel?s bombardment of Lebanon.

? Israel will support the deployment of a temporary international peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon, defence minister says

? Army says Israel has yet to decide on whether forces need to launch a major ground invasion of Lebanon

? Syria will enter the conflict if Israeli ground forces enter Lebanon and approach Syria, information minister says

? Israel bombs Hizbollah?s stronghold in Beirut and civilian targets in east and south Lebanon.

? More than a dozen Hizbollah rockets slam into the northern Israeli city of Haifa, killing two people and wounding 15 others, medics and the army say.

? Israeli Defence Minister Amir Peretz says that Israel is willing to accept the deployment of an international peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon.

? Israeli bombing of a Beirut neighbourhood where Hizbollah had its headquarters has breached humanitarian law, UN emergency relief coordinator Jan Egeland says.

? Israel?s army finds the body of a soldier reported missing in south Lebanon during fighting last week, a spokeswoman said.

? Israeli soldiers oust Hizbollah guerrillas from hilltop village of Maroun al-Ras, a stronghold just inside Lebanon, where six Israeli commandos have been killed this week.

? Israeli officials estimate that between one third to a half of all residents in the country?s north have fled to escape Hizbollah rocket attacks, Haaretz newspaper reports.

? Ministers from France, Germany and Britain are all due to hold separate talks with Israeli officials ahead of the arrival of US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who heads for the Middle East yesterday.

? Bush and Rice to ?strategize? about a diplomatic solution with Saudi officials at the White House yesterday.

? Italy to host international conference on Wednesday on possible cease-fire and deployment of foreign troops on Lebanese border. Rice to attend, but not Iran, Syria, Israel.