Israelis Authorize Expansion Of Combat

[Israeli troops, backed by tanks and armored vehicles, also entered the southern Lebanon town of Christian town of Marjayoun, witnesses said. They did not meet any resistance, according to the AP.]

Most of the combat Wednesday took place only a few miles inside Lebanese territory, underlining the difficulty Israeli infantry and armor units have encountered in seeking to clear the border strip of Hezbollah fighters and rocket launchers.

The deadliest incident came in Dbil, a Lebanese village about two miles from the northeastern Israeli border. A massive explosion there engulfed a house where Israeli forces were gathered, killing nine reserve paratroops and wounding at least 17, according to an Israeli military spokesman.

Maj. Svika Golan, a spokesman for the army's Northern Command, described the house as a "Hezbollah bunker with explosives in it."

He said it was not clear what had triggered the fatal blast, and that Israeli forces were seeking to determine whether the house had been booby-trapped or fired upon from outside.

It took hours to evacuate the wounded, some of whom were carried by fellow soldiers across the border, he said.

Four other reserve soldiers died when their tank rolled over a mine near the town of Ait Al-Shaab, the scene of some of the fiercest clashes in recent days, a military spokesman said.

An infantry soldier was killed by a mortar blast near Marjayoun, according to an Israeli military spokesman. No details were available on how the 15th Israeli soldier died.

Despite Wednesday's heavy losses, Lt. Col. Yishai Efroni, deputy commander of an infantry brigade operating along the western part of the border, welcomed the decision by the Israeli cabinet.

"That's the only way to solve this rocket problem," he said. "When we control more of their towns, the Lebanese people will realize they have much more to lose and will put pressure on Hezbollah themselves. Our soldiers just want to do this job and go home."

Several soldiers interviewed at a government-run hospital in Tzfat, where many of the previous day's wounded were evacuated, said the only way to stop the barrages of rocket fire was to push the militants beyond the Litani River, which at its farthest point in the west is 18 miles from Israel's northern border.

"We certainly have the ability to do more than we are doing," said Lt. Omri Schacher, a paratrooper whose right leg was shattered by shrapnel from an antitank missile Monday near the Lebanese village of Arteri. "We understand we will have to cope with more losses, but you have to sacrifice sometimes to achieve your goals, and we will do it."

Some soldiers said, however, that the ground fighting brought too high a cost. Lt. Shlomi Shriki, a combat engineer, was heavily bandaged with shrapnel embedded in his left arm and leg from a missile attack on his bulldozer Monday near Bint Jbeil. Asked whether he thought the army should intensify its attacks on Hezbollah, he said, "Yeah, but from the air."

"On the ground people get hurt. Too many people," he said, almost in a whisper. "I don't say no to ground forces, but it needs to be in a more organized way. So far, this has not been in an organized way."

Finer reported from Tzfat, Israel. Correspondents Edward Cody and Nora Boustany in Beirut and staff writer Robin Wright in Washington contributed to this report.