Premier Ehud Olmert reiterated in a newspaper interview that Israel would not halt its offensive against Hezbollah guerrillas in south Lebanon until an international force of some 15,000 combat-ready troops was deployed there.

The difficulty of assembling such a force was highlighted when the United Nations postponed a meeting of potential troop-contributing countries for a second time.

Hizbollah guerrillas killed seven people in a rocket barrage on Israel and three Israeli soldiers in fighting in Lebanon yesterday, the deadliest day of the war for Israel.

In a televised speech, Hizbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said the group would target Tel Aviv if Israel attacked central Beirut. He said rocket attacks would cease if Israel halted its bombing campaign in Lebanon.

Israel is pouring thousands of ground troops into southern Lebanon with the aim of creating a buffer zone there until the arrival of a multinational force, the military and observers said yesterday.

Up to 10,000 ground troops were battling Hezbollah around more than a dozen villages in south Lebanon on Thursday with the aim of clearing the area of Hezbollah fighters, Tzvika Golan, a spokesman for Israel's northern command, told AFP.

The troops were to establish a "security zone" six to eight kilometers (four to five miles) deep along Lebanon's border with Israel in order to "push Hezbollah further north," he said.

Israeli media reported that the army had been told to establish the zone by the end of the day on Thursday.

General Gai Tzurn, one of Israel's top military commanders in the Lebanon offensive, denied that the security buffer would mirror the one that Israel held in southern Lebanon between 1985 and 2000.

That zone reached eight to 15 kilometres inside Lebanon along 100 kilometres of the border.

"Our aim is to put in place a mobile presence and we don't have any intention of installing ourselves in fixed positions on the ground," he told army radio.

Two Israeli soldiers died after being wounded in fighting in southern Lebanon, al-Jazeera news channel reported Thursday.

In Tel Aviv, Israeli military declined to comment on the report.

Six Israeli civilians were killed in a hail of nearly a 100 rockets launched at northern Israel from south Lebanon within the space of an hour, according to police, army and medical officials.

Three people were killed by rocket that slammed into the northern village of Maalot, close to the Lebanese border, that was hit by more than 40 rockets.

Another two people were killed by a strike in the coastal city of Acre some 25 kilometers (16 miles) south of the Lebanese border, an attack that also wounded at least five people.

It was not immediately clear where the sixth victim was killed.

Malaysia, chair of the 57-nation Organisation of the Islamic Conference, said "the international community is in paralysis" and called on Muslim countries meeting in Kuala Lumpur to contribute troops to a UN force for Lebanon.

In a sign of diplomatic progress toward a ceasefire, the permanent UN Security Council members embarked on intense talks on the conflict and ambassadors said a resolution setting out a possible settlement was close.

French ambassador Jean-Marc de La Sabliere said a UN accord was now within reach.

"We are working very well. We are getting closer, much closer," he said, although ambassadors said there was still no agreement on how many resolutions were needed or on the makeup of any international force.

Britain's UN ambassador Emyr Jones-Parry told reporters that "a text which actually takes us forward" could be discussed in the Security Council as early as Friday.

US ambassador John Bolton said Wednesday's talks had been "encouraging" but more work needed to be done on a final agreement, while the White House predicted a resolution within "days".

But differences between France and the United States forced the United Nations to again postpone a planned meeting Thursday of potential contributors to an international force.

Olmert said he expected a UN resolution sometime next week but Israel's pullout would then depend on how quickly international forces could be assembled and deployed into Lebanon.

Lebanese officials estimate that Israeli bombardments have caused losses of 2.5 billion dollars.

Explosions lit up the night sky over the Lebanese capital as aircraft circled overhead, the first such strikes on the battered city since Israel declared a partial bombing lull on Sunday.

No details of casualties were immediately available but southern suburbs of Beirut, considered a stronghold of the Hezbollah Shia militia, have been largely reduced to rubble after earlier heavy Israeli air attacks.

Israeli jets also struck the northern Lebanese region of Akkar, near the Syrian border, the second attack there in 24 hours after two bridges were hit early Wednesday, Lebanese police said.

The fresh air strikes came after Hezbollah fired its biggest salvo of rockets at Israel on Wednesday, in apparent retaliation for an Israeli commando operation in which five suspected guerrillas were snatched from a hospital.

One Israeli was killed in the barrage of 230 rockets, the heaviest in 23 days of fighting sparked by Hezbollah's July 12 attack inside Israel in which eight Israeli soldiers were killed and two abducted.

A Hezbollah missile also hit near Beit Shean, some 60km south of the Lebanese border in the militia's deepest strike yet into Israel.

The barrage came as a blow to Israeli claims to have significantly reduced Hezbollah's ability to launch such rocket strikes, the main objective of the Jewish state's war in southern Lebanon.

It came hours after Israeli special forces descended by helicopter early Wednesday onto the ancient city of Baalbek, 100 kilometres north of Israel, and attacked a hospital said by Israel to be a Hezbollah stronghold.

"We have carried out this operation to prove that we can hit everywhere in Lebanon," army chief of staff Dan Halutz told reporters after the raid, which involved some 200 elite troops.

A military source told AFP that for the first time, Hezbollah fired a Syrian-made Fajer-5 missile, with a longer range and larger warhead, hitting the northern town of Rosh Pina and causing no injuries.

The militia has fired more than 2,000 rockets at northern Israel since the start of the offensive on July 12, killing 19 civilians, while more than 800 people, mostly civilians have been killed by Israeli strikes on Lebanon.

At least seven people were killed, including an 80-year-old couple, as Israel renewed its air, sea and land bombardment of the southern Tyre region, police said. All died when their homes collapsed.