Rice Outlines Proposal to Deploy Force In Lebanon

Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, left, and U.S. Ambassador Jeffrey Feltman, top left, look on as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice greets Lebanese Foreign Minister Fawzi Salloukh in a visit to Beirut. (By Ben Curtis -- Associated Press)

Rice told Berri that she was "deeply concerned" about the Lebanese and "what they are enduring." President Bush had personally asked her to make Lebanon the first stop of her Middle East mission, she said. But she also told Berri, whose mainstream Shiite Amal party has worked politically with Hezbollah, that "the situation on the border cannot return to what it was before July 12."

After her five-hour visit under heavy guard through a Beirut that was suddenly quiet, Rice flew back to Cyprus, then on to Israel, where she had a working dinner with Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni.

On the battlefield, Israeli soldiers, encountering a seasoned Hezbollah guerrilla force, say they have killed dozens of gunmen fighting with guided anti-tank missiles, mortars and small arms from houses, tunnels and bunkers in the past few days.

"They're in the forests and inside hiding places in town. They hide in holes in the ground," said Lt. Shahar Mintz, 20, who serves in a tank battalion operating inside Lebanon. "They have so many places to hide from the airstrikes, so we have to send in the infantry. It can be dangerous."

Mintz spoke from Avivim, an Israeli farming community a half-mile from the hilltop Lebanese town of Maroun al-Ras, where Israel's ground operation has focused in recent days. Busloads of soldiers mustered in the mostly abandoned town, painting their faces green and black before walking into Lebanon.

Columns of four to five tanks waited to be sent across the border. At least a dozen ambulances awaited the wounded. Israeli unmanned drone aircraft buzzed overhead, and a steady pounding of air and artillery strikes sounded throughout the day, leaving Maroun al-Ras shrouded in a brown-gray fog of smoke and dust.

On Israel's second front, the Gaza Strip, where the governing Hamas movement's military wing and two smaller armed groups continue holding an Israeli soldier captured in a June 25 raid on an army post just outside Gaza, at least six Palestinians died in Israeli artillery strikes near the town of Beit Lahiya. Palestinian hospital officials said the dead included a 50-year-old woman, her 11-year-old grandson and a 4-year-old girl.

An Israeli army spokeswoman said 20 rockets were launched from Gaza in the last two days, including eight on Monday from the area that Israeli forces were targeting. In the incident that killed the girl, the spokeswoman said Israeli forces were not aiming at residential buildings "but one of our shells misfired, and it hit closer to the civilian population than it was aimed."

The military was also investigating the crash of an Apache Longbow helicopter in Israel's northern Galilee region that had been flying support operations for troops on the edge of Bint Jbeil. Israeli military officials said two crew members died in the crash.

While leaving open the possibility the helicopter could have been damaged by Hezbollah ground fire, Israeli military officials said it was more likely that a technical malfunction caused the crash, the second by a U.S.-made Apache here in the past week.

"This battle against Hezbollah is going to last," Avi Dichter, Israel's public security minister, told a small group of reporters in Jerusalem. "We're not in any hurry."

But Dichter also acknowledged that the military operation would likely make way for diplomacy in the coming days.