Fighting intensifies in Lebanon

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Israel and Hezbollah sharply intensified fighting Saturday with airstrikes, rocket attacks and brutal ground fighting — an apparent bid to inflict maximum mutual damage even as the United States and France agreed on a draft U.N. resolution calling for a halt to the violence.

Even if the U.N. Security Council adopts the resolution early next week as expected, the task of winning agreement from the warring parties portended a far more bumpy diplomatic road than the one already traveled.

As it became clear a U.S.-French agreement on the text was drawing near, Israeli-Hezbollah fighting grew particularly intense over the past few days.

Israeli commandos battled Hezbollah guerrillas in a dramatic raid on an apartment building in the southern port city of Tyre on Saturday, while warplanes blasted south Beirut. The fighting across Lebanon killed at least eight Lebanese and two Israeli soldiers, while a Hezbollah rocket volley killed three women in northern Israel.

Early today, Israeli forces arrested the speaker of the Palestinian parliament at his house in the West Bank and pressed their monthlong offensive in Gaza against Hamas.

About 20 Israeli army vehicles surrounded the house of parliament speaker Abdel Aziz Duaik, a member of Hamas, and took him into custody, the director of the speaker's office and security officers said. The Israeli military said that as a Hamas leader, he was a target for arrest.

Shortly after the diplomatic agreement was announced Saturday on the 25th day of the conflict, a Hezbollah Cabinet minister said militant Shiite guerrillas would not stop fighting until all Israeli troops leave Lebanon. The draft resolution makes no such demand.

"We (will) abide by it on condition that no Israeli soldier remains inside Lebanese land. If they stay, we will not abide by it," said Mohammed Fneish, one of two Hezbollah members of the government.

An Israeli Cabinet minister said Israel, too, had no intention to end its offensive for the time being.

"The Israeli military continues to act in the meantime, without letup, in many areas," Tourism Minister Isaac Herzog said. "We still have the coming days for many military missions, but we have to know that the timetable is becoming increasingly shorter."

In the past two days, Hezbollah fired 365 rockets into Israel, including the deepest strike of the conflict — on Hadera, some 50 miles south of the border. Six civilians were killed in the attacks.