Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert says the attacks on Lebanon will be kept up until two captured soldiers are freed.

He also insisted Hezbollah guerrillas had to be disarmed and the Lebanese army had to control southern Lebanon.

“We are not looking for war or direct conflict, but if necessary we will not be frightened by it,” he said.

Up to 200 Lebanese people have died in six days of Israeli bombardment. Hezbollah has fired hundreds of rockets into Israel, killing about 12 people.

A fresh barrage of rockets was fired at Israel on Monday evening, officials said.

One landed close to a hospital in the northern town of Safed, injuring at least six people, medics quoted by Reuters news agency said.

Earlier another rocket attack injured four people in the city of Haifa, where eight people died on Sunday.

In Israeli strikes on Monday, at least 10 Lebanese people died when their vehicles were hit on a bridge in the south of the country, reports said.

At least 17 people died elsewhere, as Israeli air strikes targeted the northern city of Tripoli, the nearby port of Abdeh and the capital, Beirut.

The bodies of nine people, including six children, were reportedly found in the rubble of a building in Tyre hit by Israeli missiles on Sunday. One report said they had been trying to shelter in the basement.

sraeli ground forces also entered southern Lebanon, but Israeli officials said it was not the start of a large-scale invasion.

Israel launched its offensive last Wednesday following the capture of the two soldiers in a cross-border raid by Hezbollah.

As the Israeli attacks continue, Lebanese officials say large numbers of people in the south have abandoned their homes.

A BBC correspondent travelling through the south says the roads are clogged with packed vehicles. Many of the displaced, he says, appear exhausted and bewildered.

UN chief Kofi Annan and UK PM Tony Blair have called for an international force to be sent to Lebanon.

The force could “stop the bombardment coming over into Israel and therefore gives Israel a reason to stop its attacks on Hezbollah”, Mr Blair said.

Mr Annan suggested a “package of actions, not exhortations” that would require parties to release prisoners, stop both rocket attacks into Israel and retaliatory action and “pursue this idea of a stabilisation force”.

Israeli spokeswoman Miri Eisin told the BBC it was too early to consider a new force.

In other developments:

• Lebanese TV showed footage of what it said was an Israeli F-16 fighter aircraft falling from the sky over Beirut in flames, but Israel said none of its aircraft had been shot down, and said it was a missile
• The evacuation of foreigners continued, with a cruise ship chartered by France picking up hundreds of people from Beirut
• French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin arrived in Beirut as an expression of solidarity with the Lebanese people
• The US said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice would be travelling to the region, although a date was not set
• UN special envoy Vijay Nambiar spoke of “promising” first steps after ceasefire talks in Beirut, but said much work remained to be done; he meets Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni on Tuesday

Israeli forces have also kept up their offensive in the Gaza Strip - which began after an Israeli soldier was seized by Palestinian militants last month.

Link: BBC News

By Amira Hass, Haaretz Correspondent

For the first time since 1967, Israel is preventing the entry of Palestinians with foreign citizenship, most of them Americans.

Most of those refused entry are arriving from abroad, but have lived and worked for years in the West Bank.

According to a growing number of accounts from West Bank residents, petitions to the High Court of Justice and monitoring by Haaretz, the number of those barred from entering Israel en route to the territories has been steadily rising since April 2006.

The Interior Ministry and Civil Administration made no formal announcement about a policy change, leaving returnees to discover the situation when they reach the border crossings.

By various estimates, the ban has so far affected several thousand American and European nationals, whom Israel has kept from returning to their homes and jobs, or from visiting their families in the West Bank. This could potentially impact many more thousands who live in the territories - including university instructors and researchers, employees working in various vital development programs and business owners - as well as thousands of foreign citizens who pay annual visits to relatives there. The policy also applies to foreigners who are not Palestinian but are married to Palestinians, and to visiting academics.

The first group to suffer are Palestinians born in the territories, whose residency Israel revoked after 1967 while they were working or studying abroad. Some eventually married residents of the territories, or returned to live with aging parents and siblings. Israel rejected their applications for “family reunification” (i.e., requests to have their residency restored). However, until recently Israel permitted them to continue living in the territories on tourist visas, renewable every three months by exiting and reentering the country. In some cases the State also granted them work permits.

Citizens of Arab states (whether or not of Palestinian origin) have been barred from entering Israel since 2000. A handful were allowed in as “exceptional humanitarian cases” - mostly when a first-degree relative is dying or has died - but even this practice was suspended in April.

One of the demands that Israel has posed in specific cases which attorney Leah Tsemel represented before the High Court of Justice, is that applications for visitation permits be authorized by a low-ranking official from the Palestinian Interior Ministry, who is not affiliated with Hamas. The ministry refuses to comply with this condition. Now it turns out that this policy has been extended to U.S. and European citizens.

An Israeli Interior Ministry spokesperson told Haaretz that this is not a new policy, but merely a “procedural updating.” But the High Court petitions department at the State Prosecutor’s Office, which has been addressing the phenomenon with regard to several specific petitions, wrote Tsemel on May 2, 2006 that a policy on entry of foreign nationals to the West Bank would be formulated only “at the start of next week.” Since then Tsemel has not learned whether such a policy was indeed drafted.

The U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv told Haaretz that no Israeli official informed them of a change in entry policy, and said that the United States cannot intervene in sovereign decisions of another country. Several people who were refused entry and spoke with U.S. representatives said that the consulate and embassy are well aware of the apparently new policy.

An e-mail from the department of U.S. Citizen Services in Jerusalem to a U.S. citizen who had inquired about entering the West Bank stated that the consul general had met with a representative from the Israeli Interior Ministry regarding the government’s entry policies: “The Israeli official conceded that 90-day visa entry cards, which were once routinely granted in the past, especially to U.S. citizens, are now more difficult to obtain, specifically for Palestinian American citizens traveling to the West Bank and for U.S. nationals affiliated with humanitarian organizations. Both the U.S. Embassy and the Consulate in Jerusalem are pursuing the issue.”

Israel’s Civil Administration stated in response that “the entry to the region of foreigners who are not residents of the territories takes place by means of visit permits issued by the Palestinian Authority and approved by the Israeli side,” because coordination stopped after September 2000, and entry was permitted in exceptional humanitarian cases - a practice that was also suspended after the Hamas government was formed. Today, the statement continued, cases “involving special humanitarian need” are being considered.

The Civil Administration confirmed that the applications must be conveyed by a low-ranking official who is unaffiliated with Hamas. The Interior Ministry and Civil Administration declined to comment on the fact that for 40 years, Palestinian citizens of Western countries did not required a “visitation permit.”

Link: Haaretz.com