Israeli warplanes repeatedly bombed Beirut’s southern suburbs and Lebanon’s southern and eastern regions yesterday, killing at least 15 people hours before Arab League foreign ministers were to meet for a hastily convened session.

Both sides appeared to take advantage of the days before a cease-fire resolution, formulated by the US and France, is put to a vote in the UN Security Council. Hezbollah rocket launched its deadliest rocket barrage on Israel on Sunday, killing 12 Israeli soldiers and three civilians. Israeli warplanes began carrying out a series of air raids on southern Lebanon early yesterday.

Seven people were killed when a missile hit a house in Qassmieh on the coast north of the port city of Tyre, civil defense official Youssef Khairallah said. A woman and her daughter were killed in an attack near a Lebanese army checkpoint between the villages of Harouf and Dweir, security officials said. Four other people were killed in a raid on that destroyed a house in Kfar Tebnit. Air raids on the town of Ghaziyeh also destroyed several buildings, killing at least one person and wounding 14, hospital officials said.

A building collapsed on its residents in the village of Ghassaniyeh, and at least one body was retrieved from under the rubble. Witnesses and civil defense workers at the scene said six more people were buried under the rubble but that could not be confirmed.

Five air raids struck the market town of Nabatiyeh, targeting two office buildings, a house and one of the offices of Shiite Muslim Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah. No casualties were reported there or in raids on the villages of Jibsheet and Toul.

Attacks also were carried out in Naqoura on the border and Ras al-Biyada, about half way between Naqoura and Tyre. The UN plan would call for an immediate halt in the fighting, followed by a second resolution in a week or two that would authorize an international military force and creation of a buffer zone in south Lebanon. It also says the two Israeli soldiers held by Hezbollah should be released unconditionally. The soldiers’ capture July 12 triggered the war.

Washington and Paris were expected to circulate a new draft of the first resolution at the United Nations yesterday, taking into account some of the amendments proposed by Qatar, the only Arab nation on the Security Council, and other members, diplomats said.

In addition to repeated air raids for nearly a month, some 10,000 Israeli soldiers are fighting several hundred Hezbollah gunmen in south Lebanon, trying to track and destroy rocket launchers and push the guerrilla group out of the area.

<B>Arab anger at their governments grow</B>

As their anger against Israel and America swells, protesters across the Middle East are also increasingly venting their frustration at their Arab rulers, especially in moderate countries whose governments have been reliable US allies.

Nearly four weeks of fighting between Hezbollah and Israel have aggravated a summer of discontent over the bloodshed in Iraq, stalled democratic reforms and price increases. Angry at their governments, demonstrators are praising a new hero: Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah.

“The whole region has been engulfed in anger since the war on Iraq more than three years ago,” said Diaa Rashwan, an Egyptian analyst with the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies. “The frustration is just huge.”The rising resentment is weighing heavily on Arab leaders as their foreign ministers gatheedr in Beirut yesterday for an emergency meeting. Moderates like Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia may want a halt to the fighting, but they can’t be seen as backing a US -promoted cease-fire plan that Hezbollah has depicted as a surrender.

Even more worrisome for Arab leaders is the possibility violence may turn on them. Demonstrators have denounced leaders of Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia for blaming Hezbollah for starting the fighting by snatching two Israeli soldiers in the July 12 cross-border raid.