DAY 3, BEIRUT, July 15 (Reuters) – Residents on both sides of the Lebanese-Israeli border braced on Saturday for a dramatic spike in violence after Hizbollah’s chief declared open war on Israel following its bombardment of his Beirut home and stronghold. "You wanted open war. We are going to open war," Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said in a call to Hizbollah television.

"Look at it burn", he urged listeners, announcing an attack which set ablaze an Israeli warship that had earlier hit Beirut. Four Israeli troops were missing after the attack, which comes amid the bloodiest violence in Lebanon in over a decade, started by a cross-border attack on Wednesday in which Hizbollah guerrillas captured two Israeli soldiers and killed eight. The violence in Lebanon coincided with an Israeli attack on the Gaza Strip launched last month to try to retrieve another captured soldier and halt Palestinian rocket fire. To view more pictures pls click READ MORE, to view pictures of the first day and second day pls click NEWS ARCHIVE

WASHINGTON (CNN) — The fighting that erupted in Lebanon has prompted the Pentagon to develop scenarios for evacuating American citizens, estimated to number around 25,000, military sources told CNN.

The rapid widening of the Mideast conflict this week has created great concern in the U.S. government, which doesn’t want Americans in Lebanon caught in the middle of a shooting war.

Such moves would start small, if they happen at all, the sources said. There has been no immediate request for help and no order to move any military personnel.

The State Department has set up a Middle East Task Force to coordinate policy and share information. Defense Department officials are part of the team to talk about any possible plans for American evacuation — a customary move, said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack.

posted July 14, 2006 at 12:15 p.m, csmonitor.com, Tom Regan,  Israel continued its bombardment of Lebanon in response to the kidnapping of two soldiers by Hizbollah, Russia, France, and the European Union criticized Israel’s actions in the escalating conflict, calling them "a disproportionate act of war." The Christian Science Monitor reports that more than 50 Lebanese, most of them civilians, have already been killed in the attacks. Reuters reports that France said it would support’s Lebanon’s call to bring the situation before the United Nations Security Council, while Russia "denounced both Israel’s attack on Lebanon and its on-going operations against the Palestinian territories."

"The continuing destruction by Israel of civilian infrastructure in Lebanon and in Palestinian territory (and) the disproportionate use of force from which civilian populations suffer cannot be understood and justified," [Russian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Mikhail Kamynin] said.

"The attack on Beirut international airport is a dangerous step on the way to military escalation," he added, calling on all sides to stop a slip towards war.

But Hizbollah did not escape condemnation, some of it coming from Arab states. The Associated Press reports that while King Abdullah II of Jordan condemned Israel’s "targeting innocent civilians and the Lebanese infrastructure," he also had harsh words for Hizbollah, saying that "Jordan stands against whoever exposes the Palestinian people and their cause, Lebanon and its sovereignty to unexpected dangers"

Reuters Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Thursday an Israeli strike on Syria would be considered an attack on the whole Islamic world that would bring a