Israelis escalate offensive

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Israel poured up to 10,000 armored troops into south Lebanon Tuesday, and separately dropped helicopter-borne commandos deep into the eastern Bekaa Valley where they raided a Hezbollah-run hospital and fought pitched battles with guerrillas, in a major escalation of the 3-week-old war.

After the raid on the ancient city of Baalbek ended, the Israeli military said it had captured some guerrillas and hit others. The military statement said all its soldiers returned unharmed to their base but gave no further details.

The raid on Baalbek, once a Syrian army headquarters 80 miles north of Israel, was the deepest ground attack on Lebanon since fighting began 21 days ago.

The ferocity of the battles in the Bekaa Valley and across southern Lebanon on Tuesday and the determination of the Israelis to keep fighting quelled expectations for an early cease-fire, although U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said an agreement on how to end the conflict was possible within days, not weeks.

Hezbollah's rocket attacks into Israel, meanwhile, diminished.

Hezbollah fired just 10 rockets across the border Tuesday, well below an average of about 100 a day since fighting began.

Early today, Hezbollah's chief spokesman Hussein Rahal told The Associated Press Israeli troops landed near the Hezbollah-run Dar al-Hikma Hospital in Baalbek, about 10 miles from Lebanon's border with Syria.

"A group of Israeli commandos was brought to the hospital by a helicopter. They entered the hospital and are trapped inside as our fighters opened fire on them, and fierce fighting is still raging," Rahal said early in the operation.

Rahal dismissed as "untrue" reports that the Israeli commandos managed to snatch some patients from the hospital and spirit them away in helicopters.

Fighting between Israeli commandos and Hezbollah guerrillas around the hospital raged for more than four hours , witnesses said. Israeli warplanes staged more than 10 bombing runs around the hospital as well as on hills in east and north Baalbek where Hezbollah's Shiite supporters live, they said. There was no immediate word of casualties.

Witnesses said the hospital was hit in an Israeli airstrike and was burning.

The fighting ended at about 4 a.m.