BEIRUT (XFN-ASIA) – The Lebanese government has rejected a draft UN Security Council resolution on the Hezbollah-Israel conflict, saying it would not end hostilities and asking for the text to be amended. ‘The Lebanese government is opposed to the Franco-American draft and has sent Lebanon’s representative to the UN, Acting Foreign Minister Tarek Mitri, an amended text which includes Lebanon’s demands,’ a government source said.

 By Tom Perry, Reuters, BEIRUT (Reuters) – Ali Bajouk set off to deliver supplies to elderly relatives in the village of Aita al-Shaab thinking Israel had suspended its aerial bombardment of southern Lebanon.He was wrong. Bajouk now lies in a hospital bed in Beirut, his body, head and face wrapped in bandages to cover the burns caused by an air strike which scorched half his skin.

"We went up to Aita on the grounds there was a ceasefire," said Bajouk, 39, his mouth and eyes all that were visible beyond thick layers of bandages. "They are liars," he said.Israel had said on Sunday it would suspend air strikes on southern Lebanon for 48 hours to investigate an air strike on the village of Qana which killed 54 civilians, mainly children.There were fewer air strikes than normal on Monday and Tuesday, but warplanes still struck.

The Israeli military said it had reserved the right to strike at Hizbollah guerrillas firing rockets into Israel from their strongholds in south Lebanon. Israel also warned civilians to leave the area but residents say they are hindered by bomb damage to roads.Making the trip from the nearby village of Rmaish with friends, Bajouk was outside a shop when the missile hit.

ABC, The Lebanese Government says three weeks of Israeli bombardment has inflicted $US2 billion ($2.6 billion) of damage on Lebanon’s infrastructure. As Australians in Lebanon are urged to get on board what will possibly be the last government-chartered evacuation ship from Beirut, Lebanon’s Transport and Public Works Minister has detailed the damage to infrastructure which has impeded the refugees’ escape.

Israel launched a bombing campaign and ground incursions into Lebanon after Hezbollah guerrillas captured two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid on July 12. The bombardment has cut off many roads, bridges and flyovers in the south and east of the country as well as putting the country’s only international airport and ports out of action. Transport Minister Mohammed al-Safadi says it will take at least three months to bring the airport back up to full capacity. Two runways can be temporarily patched up in days but a third will take three months to fix, hampering the speed of recovery once hostilities end.

DAY 21, By HUSSEIN DAKROUB, Associated Press Writer, BEIRUT, Lebanon, Israel launched a major attack deep into Lebanon, and Hezbollah said its guerrillas were fighting Israeli commandos trapped inside a hospital in the eastern city of Baalbek early Wednesday.

DAY 19, Beirut- An Israeli raid Sunday on a building sheltering civilians in a village east of Tyre killed 51 Lebanese, leading to calls for an immediate truce in the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah guerrillas and causing US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to cancel a scheduled visit to Beirut.

Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Seniora and House Speaker Nabih Berri said after the number of casualties became known that ‘there will be no negotiations with Israel until there is an immediate and unconditional ceasefire.’ Seniora also later called for an emergency meeting of the United Nation Security Council to discuss an end to the violence. Sunday’s death toll in the bombing at Qana was the highest in any single incident since the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah guerrillas began on July 12.’Fifty-one Lebanese civilians were killed, among them 27 children, also we have 17 wounded,’ a hospital source in Tyre said. The building hit Sunday was housing refugees in the village of Qana, east of Tyre. An Israeli artillery strike which hit the same village in 1996 killed 109 people and forced Israel to suspend its ‘Grapes of Wrath’ operation against Hezbollah. TO VIIEW THE PICTURES PLS CLICK READ MORE and also NEWS ARCHIVE for previous days.

 JERUSALEM (Reuters)- Israel will not demand the immediate disarming of Hizbollah as part of a deal to end the fighting in Lebanon, a senior Israeli official said on Saturday. Israel’s position could make it easier to reach agreement with Western powers and the Lebanese government on the proposed deployment of a peacekeeping force in Lebanon. Hizbollah would almost certainly reject a force whose mandate called for its disarmament.

"Disarming Hizbollah will not be part of the mandate for the (peacekeeping) mission for now," a senior Israeli Foreign Ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters. "However it is supposed to strengthen the Lebanese army, the responsibility of which will be to implement  UN security council.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said Israel saw the full implementation of resolution 1559 as "the only real way to solve the problem in Lebanon."Asked if Israel was demanding Hizbollah’s immediate disarmament, Regev said: "Hizbollah has to be disarmed as soon as possible."France has emerged as the potential leader of a multinational force but has ruled out deployment until a ceasefire and political agreement have been reached, Western diplomats say.

BEIRUT, Lebanon – Hezbollah’s leader on Saturday threatened more attacks on central Israeli cities, a day after guerrillas for the first time fired a rocket powerful enough to reach the outskirts of Tel Aviv. Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, speaking on Hezbollah’s TV station, said he supported Lebanon’s efforts to negotiate a peace deal, but suggested tentative promises for the guerrillas to disarm would be off if conditions aren’t met.Israel has not made a "single military accomplishment" in its offensive on Lebanon, he said, speaking on the group’s Al-Manar television.

Nasrallah announced that Israel suffered a "serious defeat" in ground fighting around a Lebanese border town after Israeli troops pulled back Saturday afternoon. Israel said they left Bint Jbail because they accomplished their mission of wearing down Hezbollah fighters after a week of heavy battles.On Friday, a Hezbollah rocket hit outside the Israeli town of Afula, the farthest strike yet. Hezbollah said it targeted an Israeli military base, but the rockets fell in an empty field.

"The bombardment of Afula and its military base is the beginning …, Nasrallah said. "Many cities in the center (of Israel) will be targeted in the ‘beyond Haifa’ stage if the savage aggression continues on our country, people and villages."

BEIRUT, 29 July (IRIN) – Lebanon is facing an environmental crisis after an Israeli air strike on the Jiyeh power station, about 20km south of Beirut caused 10,000 tonnes of oil to spill into the Mediterranean sea. The air strikes on 13 and 15 July hit the power station’s fuel tanks and the leaking oil was pushed north by winds, and a thick sludge now coats much of the Lebanese coastline. At least 80km of the 200km coastline is affected. Officials at Lebanon’s environment ministry say that the clean-up operation will take at least a year to complete and at an estimated cost of more than US $ 130 million.

"It is about 10,000 tonnes of oil, but because of the security situation we cannot go into the sea to see what the real situation is," said a spokeswoman at the ministry, who requested anonymity. There are fears that more oil could spill into the sea due to a fire at the facility that began on Thursday and now threatens a undamaged tank that contains 15,000 tonnes of oil. The fire at the facility has created a thick cloud of black smoke that has polluted the air over Beirut and its suburbs. Government officials say although the fire poses a environmental hazard in the long-term it is less damaging than a spill into the sea. "It’s good in a way because air pollution is the better of the two evils," the spokeswoman said.

DAY 15, BEIRUT (Reuters) – Israel launched a heavy air and artillery bombardment of south Lebanon on Thursday after nine Israeli soldiers were killed in the Jewish state’s worst 24 hours for casualties in a 16-day-old conflict against Hizbollah. Israeli warplanes destroyed communication masts north of Beirut and attacked three trucks carrying medical and food supplies to the east, security sources said. They said two truck drivers were killed. Israel accuses Lebanon’s eastern neighbor Syria of supplying Hizbollah guerrillas with weapons.

Callie Lefevre, I am one of the many American students evacuated from Lebanon in the last week. I’ve been asked to write about the experience, which I do gladly but with the significant caveat that the reader understands that my experience was nowhere near as tragic and intense as the experience of the average Lebanese in Beirut at this time. For me, even before war broke out, my stay in Lebanon had a sense of unreality–of being so remote from my usual experience that I imagined myself more a character in a fiction than Callie Lefevre in reality. In its opening chapters, it was a wonderful, romantic story, slightly more exciting than the usual study abroad story because of the greater potential for discovery and adventure in the Middle East. But even when the story turned somewhat frightening and sad, it was still a story, more or less. I always held within me the comforting knowledge that my home stood waiting for me, on a little undisturbed cobblestone street in Philadelphia, if only, like Dorothy, I could get back to it. Beirut is not my permanent home, and its concrete and glass high-rises that have become piles of grey rubble don’t house the memories of my childhood or of aunts and uncles opening their doors to holiday feasts. To see a pile of grey rubble and know that it was your home, to see the body of a seven year old girl in little blue pajamas and know that it was your younger sister (who yesterday smuggled a baby chick into the car so it would be safe from the bombs) is real experience on a very different plane than the one I occupied