A map with an Aug. 4 article on fighting between Israel and Hezbollah showed an incorrect location for the Israeli town of Acre. It is on the coast, north of Haifa.
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Israel Suffers Highest Toll Yet
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France and the United States remain divided on the terms of a U.N. Security Council resolution that would call for a halt to the fighting and open the way to a European-led force for southern Lebanon. The United States favors a muscular international force that would help disarm Hezbollah and prevent it from firing rockets against Israeli towns. The French prefer a force that would help police an agreement in which Hezbollah disarms voluntarily.
Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos said after meeting with Syria's president in Damascus that Syria had indicated it could be willing to help negotiate with Hezbollah. Sharing a border with Lebanon, Syria is one of Hezbollah's primary benefactors, along with Iran.
The Syrians "are going to exercise all their influence on Hezbollah, but the circumstances and political and military context of Lebanon must change," Moratinos said.
But in Malaysia, Iran's president told an emergency meeting of Muslim leaders that the solution to the crisis was to destroy Israel. "Although the main solution is for the elimination of the Zionist regime, at this stage an immediate cease-fire must be implemented," President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told the Organization of the Islamic Conference, the world's largest grouping of Islamic countries.
The State Department said Thursday that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld had approved a plan to "train and equip" Lebanese armed forces.
Spokesman Sean McCormack provided few details of the plan, but said it was intended to help the Lebanese government "exercise control and sovereignty over all of Lebanese territory once we have an end to the fighting."
Meanwhile, in the southern Gaza Strip, 10 Palestinians, including a 12-year-old boy, were killed in nearly 24 hours of Israeli military operations, Palestinians said. The dead included two members of Hamas and two members of Islamic Jihad, according to the two organizations.
[Early Friday, two Palestinians were killed, hospital officials said. The Israeli military said an aircraft attacked two armed Palestinians, the Associated Press reported. Another Palestinian was targeted and killed by an airstrike, AP cited Palestinian officials as saying.]
The Israel Defense Forces said in a statement Thursday that the operation, which had begun in the morning, was intended to attack "a number of terrorist cells in the southern Gaza Strip."
Israeli forces have been conducting operations in Gaza since Palestinian fighters captured an Israeli soldier on June 25.
Moore reported from Jerusalem. Correspondents Anthony Shadid in Tyre, Lebanon, Nora Boustany and Edward Cody in Beirut, staff writer Glenn Kessler in Washington and special correspondents Tal Zipper in Avivim and Islam Abdul Karim in Gaza City contributed to this report.
