Deadliest Day for Israel in Lebanon

The Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said that it has stockpiled in Syria relief supplies for more than 20,000 people, but was awaiting Israeli authorization to move the materials into Lebanon for relay to the southern towns and villages that have borne the brunt of Israel's air assaults.

Tens of thousands of foreign citizens have fled Lebanon since the fighting erupted. More than 14,000 Americans have been evacuated on military helicopters, warships and cruise vessels in the past 10 days, U.S. officials said Wednesday. The total was nearly double the early U.S. government estimates of likely evacuees. About 25,000 U.S. citizens are believed to be in Lebanon. U.S. officials said hundreds have left the country by crossing into Syria.

Marine Brig. Gen. Carl Jensen, commander of the military task force coordinating evacuation efforts from nearby Cyprus, told reporters at the Pentagon on Wednesday that the number of Americans leaving Lebanon had slowed to "a trickle."

Also Wednesday, U.N. officials repeated statements that an Israeli air attack that killed four of its border security monitors Tuesday appeared to be deliberate. U.N. humanitarian chief Jan Egeland, concluding a six-day mission that took him to Lebanon, Israel and the Gaza Strip, said in Jerusalem that "precision munitions" had landed a direct hit on the U.N. post, despite repeated requests from the U.N. mission in Lebanon, known as UNIFIL, to stop firing.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, U.N. officials in Jerusalem said UNIFIL commanders made 10 calls to Israeli military officers Tuesday over six hours, asking that repeated shelling near the compound be halted. In each case, an official said, Israeli officers gave assurances that it would.

The office of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said in a statement that he had expressed "deep regret" over the incident to U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, but called it "inconceivable" that the attack was intentional.

Earlier in the day, Olmert said he would favor deployment of an international force to provide security along the border once Israel's military operation has achieved its objectives. He has said the goal is to stop the rocket attacks and to force Hezbollah to disarm, withdraw from the border and release two soldiers it kidnapped July 12 in a cross-border raid -- the incident that sparked the recent fighting.

[At a news conference in Paris, the mother of one of those soldiers appealed for indications that her son is alive, the Associated Press reported. Malka Goldwasser and other relatives, citing France's historic connections to Lebanon, said they felt France provided the best chance to obtain the soldiers' freedom or, at least, news that they were well.]

Olmert's government has expressed preference for soldiers from NATO rather than a force fielded by the United Nations.

Michael Oren, an Israeli author and historian currently called up to reserve duty as a spokesman for the army, said it was "a sea change" for a country that "has always prided itself on saying we can handle our security on our own to say it wants international forces."

A veteran of Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon, which led to an 18-year occupation of a security zone along the border and helped give birth to Hezbollah, he called southern Lebanon "an infantrymen's nightmare with a combination of dense woods, ravines, high mountains and, when you're not in the wilderness, narrow alleyways."

Israeli commanders said more than 200 Hezbollah fighters had been killed in recent days, the first time they had put a number on the group's losses. Photographers camped by the border took pictures of soldiers bringing the bodies of five Hezbollah fighters into Israel at about 4 a.m. Wednesday.