Israeli troops battled Hizbollah in south Lebanon and eight civilians died in two of many Israeli air strikes yesterday as both sides spoke of fighting on, even if the UN Security Council votes to end the violence. The Israeli army said it had also captured one of the Hizbollah guerrillas who took part in the abduction of two Israeli soldiers on July 12.

The seizure of the soldiers in a cross-border raid sparked Israel?s war against the guerrilla group in Lebanon. ?We can confirm that one of the Hizbollah (fighters) we have captured and interrogated was involved in the kidnapping of our soldiers,? an army spokeswoman said.

Israeli commandos have carried out at least two helicopter-borne raids deep into Lebanon. Israel had said it seized several Hizbollah members in one raid, on the town of Baalbek last week. Hizbollah denied those seized belonged to the group.

A draft US-French resolution calls for a ?full cessation of hostilities based upon...the immediate cessation by Hizbollah of all attacks and the immediate cessation by Israel of all offensive military operations?? implicitly giving Israel the right to pursue ?defensive? military operations.

The cessation of hostilities would also leave about 10,000 Israeli troops occupying a strip of southern Lebanon until an international force and the Lebanese army eventually get there.

Lebanon objects to that, and Mohammed Fneish, a Hizbollah minister in the government, said the group would fight until Israel stopped bombing Lebanon and withdrew all its troops.

Israeli Justice Minister Haim Ramon said Israel would keep attacking Hizbollah targets in Lebanon and its soldiers would stay there until the international force arrived to take over.

He did not say if Israel accepted the draft U.N. resolution. The Israeli cabinet was meeting.

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State David Welch was due to meet Israeli leaders after talks in Beirut on Saturday. ?We must continue the fighting, continue to hit whoever we can hit from Hizbollah,? Ramon told Army Radio.

Israel?s definition of Hizbollah targets has included more than 70 bridges, as well as ports, airports, radar stations, television and telephone masts, factories, farms and countless homes pummelled into ruin by 26 days of bombing across Lebanon.

Hizbollah, which is backed by Syria and Iran, has hit back with rockets that fall indiscriminately in northern Israel. Ten Israeli soldiers were killed when a Hizbollah rocket landed in a group of reservists, the guerrilla group?s deadliest single missile strike of the Lebanon war. The Magen David Adom ambulance service said 10 soldiers had been killed and nine wounded, four critically.

Hizbollah rockets

The army confirmed reservists called up for duty for ground operations in southern Lebanon had been killed in the attack on the Kfar Giladi communal farm, but did not say how many.

Television footage showed soldiers near the scene holding their heads and one weeping as a military ambulance pulled away. Helicopters landed nearby to fly the seriously wounded to hospitals further from the war front. Blood-stained army boots stood against a wall. Stretchers lay on the ground, covered in blood.

One officer looked down at the bodies, some covered by blankets, and shook his head in disbelief. ?I don?t recall so many dead ever. This is terrible,? said Ron Valensi, head of the upper Galilee municipal council and a resident of Kfar Giladi, speaking on Channel 2 Television.

More than 800 people, mostly Lebanese civilians, have been killed in the conflict sparked by Hizbollah?s capture of two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid on July 12.

Among the latest to die were five people in the Shi?ite village of Ansar in south Lebanon, where 12 Israeli air strikes from midnight to dawn flattened 15 buildings, residents said. Rescuers said 10 people were wounded by the bombing. Three civilians were killed in an air strike near the southern village of Naqoura.

President George W. Bush, who sees Hizbollah as the common enemy of Israel and the United States, was happy with the draft U.N. measure which could be put to a vote on Monday or Tuesday.

Lebanon said the text was a ?recipe for more confrontation? because it failed to demand an Israeli pullout. Beirut would circulate its own ideas among the 15-member Security Council, a senior political source said yesterday.

The Lebanese plan, endorsed by the cabinet calls for an immediate ceasefire, the withdrawal of Israeli forces, the return of displaced Lebanese, the deployment of U.N. and Lebanese forces in the south and the eventual disarmament of Hizbollah.

A second U.N. resolution is envisaged a week or two after the first is adopted, setting conditions for a permanent ceasefire and authorising an international force in the area.

The first draft is the result of negotiations between the United States, Israel?s chief ally, and France, tipped to lead the anticipated international force in south Lebanon.

Bekaa Valley isolated

Israeli jets bombed roads in the eastern Bekaa valley at least eight times yesterday, virtually isolating the region from the rest of Lebanon and nearby Syria, security sources said.

Aircraft also hit positions held by a pro-Syrian Palestinian guerrilla group, killing two of its members.

At the United Nations, Lebanese Foreign Ministry official Nouhad Mahmoud said Beirut was unhappy the draft resolution did not ask for the Shebaa Farms border area to be put under U.N. control, as Lebanon had asked, while its fate was resolved.

The United Nations says it considers the tiny enclave to be Israeli-occupied Syrian land, unless Lebanon, which claims it, demarcates new borders with Syria. Mahmoud said the draft must address the concerns of the Lebanese people.

The war coincides with an Israeli military offensive in the southern Gaza Strip to recover another captured soldier. An air strike killed one Palestinian in the strip yesterday, bringing to at least 167 the number of Palestinians killed in the campaign, more than half of them civilians.

In the West Bank city of Ramallah, Israeli forces detained Palestinian parliament speaker Aziz Dweik, a Hamas leader.