Hezbollah Joins New Call for Cease-Fire

Plan Endorsed By Lebanon Differs From U.S. Approach

An Israeli soldier surveys an array of armored vehicles stationed at a quarry used as a gathering area in northern Israel. More than 100 Hezbollah missiles struck Israel on Friday. (By Baz Ratner -- Associated Press)

BEIRUT, July 28 -- As fighting raged on in southern Lebanon, Hezbollah joined the Lebanese government in a peace proposal calling for an immediate cease-fire with Israel followed swiftly by a prisoner exchange and reinforcement of U.N. troops along the embattled border, senior Lebanese officials said Friday.

The agreement for the first time put Hezbollah and the rest of the Lebanese government in a unified position on how to end the 17-day-old conflict. But its terms varied widely from ideas put forth by Israel and the United States, particularly its insistence on an immediate cease-fire.

In Washington, President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair said Friday they wanted a cease-fire, but only after a U.N. framework is devised that would extend Lebanese government authority to the south and disarm Hezbollah forces. They called for the dispatch of an international force to southern Lebanon.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will return to the region for more diplomacy Saturday, Bush said. U.S. officials and European diplomats said the elements for an eventual cease-fire -- on a track separate from the Lebanese proposal -- are taking shape despite the failure of a conference Wednesday in Rome to call for an immediate end to the escalating crisis.

More than 100 missiles crashed into northern Israel on Friday, slightly wounding 14 people. Israeli warplanes and heavy artillery, meanwhile, maintained a punishing rhythm of attacks against what officials in Jerusalem called Hezbollah targets.

Israeli and Hezbollah forces again traded fire in several Lebanese towns and villages Friday. Twenty-six Hezbollah fighters were killed Friday in the contested town of Bint Jbeil, the military said, and large amounts of weaponry were found there, including rifles, antitank missiles, and materials and instructions for making explosives. The Israeli military reported that six Israeli soldiers were wounded.

Lebanese officials told reporters that at least 10 more civilians were killed in fighting in the southern Lebanese hills. Three others died in early-morning Israeli attacks in the Bekaa Valley to the northeast, pushing the confirmed civilian death toll to nearly 450, according to Lebanese officials.

Journalists driving along south Lebanon's roads described a relentless drumbeat of bombs, rockets and artillery shells as jets flew overhead and artillery batteries fired from just south of the frontier. One convoy of evacuees and journalists, heading from Rmeish to Tyre, was jarred by an Israeli shell that crashed down nearby, slightly wounding a cameraman and driver for a German television station.

In the seaside city of Tyre, the trails of several Katyusha rockets arced overhead in the afternoon, headed for northern Israel. Convoys of scores of cars plied the border road that snakes along the hilly Lebanese-Israeli frontier. Nearly all flew white flags.

In Aita al-Shaab, one of the hardest-hit villages, a group of Syrian workers carried their white flags on tree branches. Others stranded along the road pleaded for help -- food, medicine or a ride to Beirut.

[On Saturday, an Israeli army spokesman said the army had launched two air strikes overnight into the Gaza Strip, the first on a weapons storage facility and the other on a tunnel along the Gaza-Egypt border, adding that "forces entered an industrial area seaching for tunnels and explosive devices as part of our earlier operations, not an incursion of any sort."]

U.N. humanitarian chief Jan Egeland called Friday for a three-day truce to evacuate trapped civilians and replenish supplies in areas of Lebanon cut off by the fighting. Egeland told reporters that thousands of children, elderly and disabled have been stranded by more than two weeks of war, while supplies of food and medicines are dwindling.