Hezbollah Fighters Kill 9 Israeli Soldiers

United Nations soldiers from China watch at the rubble of a destroyed building that was attacked by Israeli warplane missiles last week, as they search for the bodies of missing persons in the outskirts of the southern coastal city of Tyre, Lebanon Wednesday, July 26, 2006. A Nigerian U.N. employee, his wife and five Lebanese people were buried when the bomb flattened their home. Three of the five Lebanese were removed, including the body of a child. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis) (Lefteris Pitarakis - AP)

BEIRUT, Lebanon -- Hezbollah dealt Israel its heaviest losses in the Lebanon campaign Wednesday, killing nine soldiers in fierce firefights. With key Mideast players failing to agree on a formula for a cease-fire, an Israeli general said the operation could last weeks.

Israel said it intends to damage Hezbollah and establish a "security zone" that would be free of the guerrillas and extend 1.2 miles into Lebanon from the Israeli border. Such a zone would prevent Hezbollah from carrying out cross-border raids such as the one two weeks ago which triggered the Israeli military response.

Israel said it would maintain such a zone, with firepower or other means, until the arrival of an international force with muscle to be deployed in a wider swath of southern Lebanon _ as opposed to the U.N. force already there that has failed to prevent the violence.

In Rome, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said participants at a daylong conference on the Mideast crisis agreed Wednesday on the need for a strong international force under a U.N. mandate. Italy, Turkey and Spain all said they might send troops.

Rice said more work was needed to define the force and its mission. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora and diplomats from European and moderate Arab countries also attended the meeting; Israel, Iran and Syria did not.

The Israeli bombardment has failed to stop guerrilla rocket fire, even while killing hundreds, driving up to 750,000 people from their homes and causing billion of dollars in damage. Hezbollah guerrillas fired another large barrage into northern Israel on Wednesday _ 119 rockets that wounded at least 31 people and damaged property.

Pushing Hezbollah back with ground troops was proving to be bloody. Several thousand troops are in Lebanon, Israeli military officials said _ mainly in a roughly 6-square-mile pocket around the town of Bint Jbail, a Hezbollah stronghold just over two miles from the border.

The Hezbollah fighters are heavily outnumbered, with some 100 in Bint Jbail and several hundred more in surrounding fields, bunkers and cave, according to the officials. But they use classic guerrilla tactics, choosing when to strike in the hilly territory they know well. They are dug in with extensive tunnel networks and stockpiling weapons, including rockets with which they pelted Israeli forces Wednesday.

Violence was also increasing on the other front of Israel's fight on Islamic militants: Gaza, where Hamas-linked militants are holding an Israeli soldier seized a month ago. A force of 50 tanks and bulldozers entered the northern Gaza Strip to battle Hamas gunmen. Israeli air and artillery attacks killed 23 Palestinians, including at least 16 militants and three young girls.

Israel was feeling pressure on the international front _ and anger over a bombing Tuesday night that directly hit a U.N. observation post on the border, killing four U.N. observers.

At the Rome talks, Rice resisted pressure from allies for Washington to change its stance and call for an immediate halt to the violence.

Rice insisted any cease-fire must be "sustainable" and that there could be "no return to the status quo" _ a reference to the U.S. and Israeli position that Hezbollah must first be pushed back from the border and the Lebanese army backed by international forces deployed in the south.